Printer driver settings and postscript generation

For generating postscript files for PDF it is recommend that Adobe’s PSPrinter Virtual Printer Driver is used. This is designed with the minimum necessary postscript functionality and produces the cleanest postscript for PDFing. The Virtual Printer Driver is available from Adobe’s website www.adobe.com. If it is not possible to use the Virtual Printer Driver then Laserwriter 8 can be used but it must be used in conjunction with the Acrobat Distiller 3.0 PPD, otherwise unexpected outcomes may result. Following is a set of instructions for generating the most suitable postscript file for PDFing.

1. Chooser “PSPrinter” in the “chooser”, and the “Virtual Printer” type.
   
2. Select “Print” from the file menu, choose the “Acrobat Distiller 3.0” Printer Description set the page size to custom and the paper width to the width of your document. Under the Output tab change print colours to (composite CMYK or grayscale etc) and then Press Printer Button in print window.
   
3. Press Save Button and you will get the following window:
   
4. Select “Binary”, “Level 2 only“ and choose “All” fonts.

You are now ready to “Save” & “Print” your first Postscript file for distilling into a PDF file.

PDF settings

See Acrobat Distiller Settings for Adobe Distiller Job Options recommended by Business News, and Printer Driver Settings and Postscript Generation for recommended printer drivers.

Note: We require Acrobat compatibility to version 3 - producing

• Make sure that the document size of the advertisement being made up in the native program is the same size as the booked ad size.
• Use only Postscript Type 1 or 3 fonts. TRUETYPE FONTS ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE.
• All fonts MUST be embedded. DO NOT outline fonts unless there is no other option.
• Do not use 2, 3 or 4 tone images that have not been converted to CMYK.
• All images should be placed in document at 100%. All placed images should be cropped to finished size and rotated within their native application (i.e Photoshop).
• All boxes (picture and text) should have a background of NONE and runaround of NONE (to avoid text reflow) unless specifically required.

Colour considerations

• All colours used in four-colour artwork must be specified as process separation without exception.
• Mono Ads should not contain any colour elements prior to distilling.
• Do not use custom spot colours i.e. Pantone without first converting to process separation
• Spot colours for digital artwork must be created out of process colours.

Acrobat Distiller settings

The following settings in Job Options are shown to give the best reproduction for newspaper prepress output.