We all know PDF files aren’t always created how they should be. As a printer or publisher you also certainly know the challenges involved in taking PDF documents through your workflow and making them behave the way you want to. The Ghent Workgroup has a number of resources to help you with this.
User Guides
Over the years, the Ghent Workgroup has written highly informative papers on specific challenges around PDF and the use of PDF in design. The following user guides are particularly useful for you:
Of course there are more user guides available, check out the full list to see if anything else jumps out to you.
If a document is submitted for printing as a PDF/X file, the intended printing condition must be recorded in the file as an “output intent” structure. Click here to read more about this subject.
With the increasing use of PDFs as the file exchange format of choice, there are a number of things you need to be aware of to ensure that when you use or reuse a PDF, you get what you anticipate.
This user guide reviews today’s trends and discusses with leading players the growth of the packaging sector and the upsurge in specialist applications. It also includes an overview of the development of digitization and printing and packaging technologies and processes.
This document is intended to aid designers in better understanding native transparency, and provides best practices to help avoid the most common print problems associated with transparency.
This PDF/X workflow document explains what the differences in your workflow need to be between 1v4 and GWG2015 and how you can best take advantage of the new specification as a creator and receiver. This user guide is also available in Dutch and in Italian.
Webinars
All of the webinars the Ghent Workgroup holds are recorded so you can easily review them at your leisure. Here’s a hand-picked list of recommended videos for you:
Did that make you feel like more? The webinar page has many more interesting topics to choose from – check it out!
Make a good PDF and check it
Do you need to export the perfect PDF file from your design application? Or do you need to validate whether a PDF file is going to behave well in production? Many applications require special settings or configurations in order to export good PDF or to be able to validate it. Click here to go to the page where the Ghent Workgroup members publish their application settings.
In the downloaded zip file, you’ll find the necessary configuration files and documentation on how to install and use them. Be aware that some vendors already incorporated all necessary settings in their application, so the documentation file might just tell you that you have everything already and explain how to use it!