PDF is preferred print production format

Garry Knespal, Executive Officer of GASAA, said “I expect these results will be higher than those due out soon from a study conducted in the USA by the Seybold organisation, given the early adoption rates by Australian graphic arts businesses.”



A key factor in this high use of PDF in Australia is the exchange of PDF files for proofing purposes between creator and service provider. 88 per cent of designers said they use PDF files for approval of artwork while 80 per cent of the prepress and print professionals surveyed said they send clients PDF proofs.

More than half of the respondents said the majority of the files they now either send or received were in a PDF format (rather than the original native file). A third of service providers said they preferred to receive PDF files while almost half the designers that responded said they preferred to send PDF files for output ahead of the native file.

Seybold gives US picture

The GASAA Snapshot comes out at the same time as the Seybold Usage Survey and the Seybold PDF Shootout are released in San Francisco. The Survey’s main findings for US respondents indicated:

PDF users rank fewer cross-platform issues as the biggest benefit of PDF, and the difficulty to edit PDF files as its leading negative.
47 per cent of the PDF generators reuse PDF files for other print jobs, 61per cent for the Web and 39 per cent for CD-ROM.
In 52 per cent of the PDF generators' print jobs PDF is used for soft proofing.
A majority of the PDF receivers report that they sometimes find errors that require corrections in either native files or in PDF, but a close to a third reports that this is often the case.

The PDF Shootout gauged how 201different prepress workflow systems could create viable, press-ready PDFs from problematic application files. The five top-scoring vendors in the first phase of the shootout, which focused on PDF creation, were
Creo Prinergy (95), Dalim Twist and OneVision Speedflow (tied at 92), Agfa Apogee Create and Creo Prepare (tied at 89). All scores were based on earning a possible 100 points. Top-scoring vendors for the second phase, dealing with PDF output, were Creo Brisque (97), OneVision Speedflow (94), EFI Velocity OneFlow (93), Dalim Twist (92), Founder Electronics ElecRoc (91), and Polkadots PrePage-it and Xitron Xenith (tied at 90).

"One trend to note is that although PDF is capable of solving a host of prepress problems, the applied solutions are not yet automatic," said Pete Dyson, editor of The Seybold Report. "Smart planning and execution are imperative and no prepress system can dispense with an operator's experience and intuition."

Snapshot targets production trends

In launching the first Snapshot study Garry Knespal said “the short, sharp studies will provide a picture of technical production trends currently revealing themselves in the Australian graphic arts industry”.

In July 2002 GASAA emailed to around 4,000 people in the graphic arts industry an invitation to participate in an independent study it was conducting into the use of Acrobat and PDF in print production. The short survey could be completed on the GASAA website or a downloadable PDF Form. A credible 365 valid returns (around nine per cent) were received from all states. Three quarters of the companies that participated in the study were prepress or print service providers.

Only four per cent of those offering pre-press and print services and just six per cent of designers said they did not send or receive PDF files, preferring to work entirely with the native application files (eg Quark, InDesign, Publisher, Corel, Word etc). Two thirds of service providers that responded said they actively promote to clients that they accept PDF files.

A key factor in this high use of PDF is the exchange of PDF files for proofing purposes between creator and service provider. 88 per cent of designers said they use PDF files for approval of artwork while 80 per cent of the pre-press and print professionals surveyed said they send clients PDF proofs.

More than half of the respondents said the majority of the files they now either sent or received were in a PDF format (rather than the original native file). A third of service providers said they preferred to receive PDF files while almost half the designers that responded said they preferred to send PDF files for output ahead of the native file.

While the use of PDF files is high among respondents, problems with some of the files still exist. The disparity between designers and service providers over PDF files was most evident when questioned about problem files. Only three per cent of prepress and print professionals said they experienced no problems, while 22 per cent of designers said that their files worked without difficulty.

The survey also asked how problem files were fixed; whether security and annotations (sticky notes) were applied to PDF files and if customised settings were used. The respondents were also asked which version of Acrobat (PDF) they used.

Many respondents nominated education as the single most important thing that GASAA and Adobe could do to assist all parties better prepare PDF files for print production.

“GASAA and Adobe are working on a series of educational seminars and resources to bring to the industry in the coming months to help improve the quality of PDF files presented for final print” said Mr Knespal.

The results of the study have been posted on the GASAA website at www.gasaa.asn.au
A downloaded document (PDF of course) is also available.