Whenever a document that will be printed is created, the designer should have a specific printing condition in mind so that images and specific tints such as those in logos can be correctly prepared. The idea of a printing condition encapsulates both the print technology to be used (sheet or web offset, flexo, gravure, etc), and the media that it will be printed on. It therefore includes data about tone value increase (TVI, or dot gain) and total area coverage (TAC), as well as the actual color that will be printed for any combination of the process inks. Common printing conditions include SWOP (CGATS TR001), Fogra27, etc.
If that 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.
To read more about this subject, download the full PDF/X Output Intents white paper below:
