Expert: Ken Black - 2/11/2009

Question
Hello, Ken

Methinks I will be talking to you a lot!

I'm about to take the plunge into Print on Demand--which is to say, to become a self- "Publisher". This means dealing with Lightsource. (I always aim high.)

Aaron Shepard's book on the subject, "Aiming At Amazon" (very good, btw) indicates that not all PDF-document programs are equal. He recounts his experience with Lightsource, who often have had trouble with documents that, whilst they were indeed submitted in PDF, nevertheless originated with third-party PDF software.(Apparently Lightsource are forced to rasterize these submitted images, to poor effect.)

I was wondering; before I fork out for Adobe Acrobat, £500 that I simply do not have, if you, firstly, know of this problem, and thus can further recommend a particular third-party PDF document-maker that is unlikely to cause this problem.

Regards,
Dan  

Answer
Hi Dan,

This is true, not all pdf creation software does the job correctly. This is because most third party pdf solutions do not take high quality print into consideration or they haven't bought into Adobe's PDF Print Engine. This is mainly due to the fact that they are focused on document creation that is not being printed at all, but mainly used on the web or emailed.

The only one that I have found to be successful is the open source Ghostscript which is used with many open source graphics applications such as GIMP, Scribus or OpenOffice. These softwares are not readily packaged for installation and take a bit of study to get going, but are pretty decent once they are in operation.

The other applications such as NitroPDF and PrimoPDF, (you can find them at planetpdf.com) have had some success as well but I strongly suggest you consult with your print provider before relying on any of these solutions.

In spite of liking the open source solutions, I still ultimately stand behind Adobe at this time for anything facing critical production for high quality results.

Thanks,

Ken Black

www.bestprintingonline.com