I don’t think I’ve ever dedicated an article on Colecandoo to anyone in particular, but in this instance I’d like to dedicate this article to the incredibly patient and supportive suppliers that have to deal with not only myself; but any clients that prepare files outside of the specific needs that are required for their own workflows. To you I say thank you, and I hope this article can provide some tools going forward that might reduce those awkward phone calls asking for the resupply of artwork, especially when deadlines are tight.

It’s usually a varnish…

In our own workflow ecosystem, we have set up some very specific house spot colours that are used consistently between the artroom and presses so that all team members are in lock-step with how embellishment colours are named. Some examples are:

• Dieline
• Perf
• Score
• White Mask
• Matt Varnish
• Gloss Varnish

While these spot colours work internally, that doesn’t mean that they match our suppliers’ spot colour names. Occasionally we may work with suppliers where we have prepared an outwork PDF using our own house spot colour names and values, only to later receive an email or phone call asking for resupply as the name or value doesn’t match their values.

This happens to us with formeshapes

Because my work is now heavily involved in the boutique label space, maintaining a robust series of house spot colours for embellishments that are required has become essential. With this in mind, when we receive artwork from clients, we get to see how many variations on the name Dieline we can receive. We have seen the following variations, just to name a few:

• Knife
• Die
• Formeshape
• Cutter
• Cut line
• Knifeline

Enfocus can fix this…

A tool in the arsenal of any printing company’s prepress department is software known as Enfocus Pitstop Professional. It is a plug-in to Adobe Acrobat that allows many custom fixups that would otherwise be done by taking a PDF in Adobe Illustrator to make the alterations.

Side note: I feel I should point out that Dr Dov Isaacs (former Principal Scientist at Adobe for 30+ years) is quoted as saying:

Adobe Illustrator is not, repeat not, repeat yet again not a general purpose editor of PDF files!!!

And he should know, he was involved in the standards of Adobe Acrobat, particularly those related to printing.

…but I don’t have Enfocus!

Despite being a useful addition to Adobe Acrobat, it is also an additional subscription that – for 2023/24 – was €324.00 for a single licence. I argue that it is worth it, but understand that not everyone can justify that expense.

You don’t need Enfocus to change the Dieline colours!

The Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps subscription includes Adobe Acrobat Professional. Within this application is the ability to make significant changes to a PDF using the Preflight panel from the Print Production tools. I’ve written about this before to consistently name the varying iterations of Dieline spot colour names to one Dieline name.

Since writing that article, I’ve gone one step further and saved a setting that anyone can now download and add as a preflight to their own version of Acrobat. The link is here.

Let’s take the following example that has a range of mis-named spot colours used for the Dieline.

To add this profile to fix this issue in future:

Select the Preflight icon from the Print Production options.

Once the Preflight panel is open, select Import Profile… from the Options button in the top right hand corner of the dialog box

In the finder window that appears, navigate to the link that was just downloaded and click the Open button in the bottom right hand corner of the window.

The option will now appear, titled one Dieline. Since its now added, I don’t have to perform those steps again, but can just navigate to the preflight panel and select the fixup that was imported.

To run this profile to perform the fixup:

Select the one Dieline option from the dialog box and click the Analyze and fix button in the bottom right of the dialog box above. You will be prompted to make a new file, but you can save over the top of your old one.

Once it has run, the dialog box will present a results tab in the Preflight dialog box, and the appearance of the PDF will also change to reflect the new spot colour values.

This works for varnishes too

So back to the inspiration for this article. Knowing that this fix will hopefully resolve the need to resupply artwork, or delays and frustration involved with acquiring new artwork, I’ve prepared a setting that can be downloaded that will take several potential varnish colour names and renames them to Varnish. The link is here:

Take this file that contains several spot colour varnishes. It also contains a colour called spot that I want to keep, but would like to change the other varnish colours to one called Varnish.

I’ll add the profile like I did before with the dieline, but this time the profile that is imported will be called one Varnish. Select the one Varnish option from the dialog box and click the Analyze and fix button in the bottom right of the dialog box as done with the one Dieline previously. Again, a prompt will appear to make a new file, but the file can be saved over the top of the old one.

Once it has run, the dialog box will present a results tab in the Preflight dialog box, and the appearance of the PDF will also change to reflect the new spot colour values

Make it easier with a droplet

What’s better is that once the preflight fix has been added to Acrobat, a hot folder can be made where a PDF that needs to have the spot colours renamed doesn’t even need to be opened in Acrobat – it can just be dragged onto a hot folder, and a fixed version of the file will be saved into another location.

I’ve written about creating droplets here and encourage users to do this, especially if renaming spot colours is a common occurrence. Even better, it can do this fix without the user needing to open and look at the PDF – just drag the affected PDF onto the droplet, and a fixed PDF arrives in a different folder!

Bonus fix – crop marks that are too close

One issue that we regularly see is PDFs prepared with the crop marks too close to the trim edge, meaning there is not enough tolerance to account for paper to guillotine registration or folding registration. Again, we already have the tools to fix this, but as a bonus to this article I’ve prepared an Acrobat preflight fix that can be downloaded here.

Let’s take the dieline example earlier in the article – now I want to remove the trim marks.

Once again, I’ll add the profile like I did before with the dieline, but this time the profile that is imported will be called remove trim marks. Select the remove trim marks option from the dialog box and click the Analyze and fix button in the bottom right of the dialog box as done with the one Dieline previously. Again, a prompt will appear to make a new file, but the file can be saved over the top of the old one.

Once it has run, the dialog box will present a results tab in the Preflight dialog box, and the appearance of the PDF will also change to reflect the new spot colour values.

I don’t just have to do one at a time!

This article has deliberately shown three examples, but it is possible to do all three of these alterations – AND MORE – in one fixup. I’ve just split them up for their intended audiences, but these fixups can be used to wholly “polish” rough documents into finished art.

This is just a sample!

These three examples are just a small portion of the changes that can be unlocked with Acrobat’s preflight fixups. Try making your own, or see what else is possible by visiting the Acrobat Preflight page here.