Visually inspect PDF files
One of the biggest strengths of pdfToolbox is its ability
to preflight PDF documents and return a detailed list of errors and warnings
about a PDF file. But in some cases “good” or “not good” simply isn’t a
detailed enough answer. In such cases pdfToolbox (and pdfaPilot) provide the
visualizer to visually inspect a PDF file.
Ink coverage
Perhaps the best example of cases where the visualizer
proves its worth is when a preflight check tells you that a PDF document uses too
much ink.
The ink coverage mode of the visualizer overlays the PDF
document with a gray mask and highlights any area of the file that goes over a
certain threshold with bright colors: yellow for small overruns, progressing to
red and purple for serious overruns. This gives you an immediate view on how
serious the ink coverage problem is and can help you decide whether the file
could still be printed or not.
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Figure 1:
visualizer showing ink coverage for a PDF document
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Separations
In cases where you doubt whether a file will separate
correctly, or you simply want to examine the ink mix or overprint of certain
elements the visualizer comes in handy as well. It provides a number of
different separation preview modes to view single separations, just the process
separations, just the spot color separations and more.
When previewing separations, pdfToolbox here also shows
the total ink amount (in percentage of the surface of the trimbox and in square
cm) for separations. This information could of course be used in cost
calculations.
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Figure 2:
visualizer showing the cyan separation only
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Safety zone
While pdfToolbox and pdfaPilot provide a preflight check
to detect whether objects have enough bleed, this again is an area where visual
inspection can often decide more accurately whether a document is in fact good
for print or not.
The visualizer has a “safety zone” mode in which it highlights either the page border or the bleed area. These tools can help greatly to help judge a particular PDF document.
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Figure 3:
visualizer previewing the bleed area
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Please contact sales@compose.com.hk if you have any query on the product.
