I need help convincing my workflow administrator on Illustrator PDF presets.

Question

I need help convincing my workflow administrator on Illustrator PDF presets.
I work at a company which prints folding cartons, pressure sensitive labels, and film packaging. Esko Automation Engine 12 is our primary workflow. We use PDF files saved directly out of Illustrator as the primary file format. At times, the size of an art file can get fairly bloated from scaled images, effects, transparency, etc. The workflow and Ilustrator have a hard time dealing with the file size. It has been suggested to use the "export" function under the File Menu and save the art file as a "normalized PDF". I honestly believe Distiller isn't even remotely involved when you do this. I tried to make the case to use the settings in the dialog box which appears when you save a PDF out of Illustrator. I know for a fact that this dialog box isn't any different from what you see in Distiller. From my years of experience with Kodak Prinergy, I know things like bicubic downsampling, etc. will not hurt the file. The workflow administrator thinks otherwise. Can anybody point me in the direction of Illustrator PDF presets that would convince him otherwise?

Answer 1

Brian,
What is somewhat confusing in your post is your mentioning a capability to export PDF from the File Menu as a normalized PDF file. There is no such option in Adobe Illustrator, at least as it comes directly from Adobe. You may use the File=>Save As dialog to save the file as a PDF file, but PDF is not an option under File=>Export. Furthermore, in terms of the .joboptions provided by Adobe, there is no Normalized PDF joboptions settings.
You mention Esko. Is it possible that you have one of Esko's products installed that provides proprietary plug-ins to Adobe Illustrator? If so, that may be the source of this Normalized PDF option. Maybe some other participant in the is forum knows more about that, but at Adobe, we don't (for better or worse).
You mention problems with file bloat due to “scaled images, effects, transparency, etc.” Are you referring to the Illustrator .AI files or to PDF files created from same? If the issue is the .AI file size, the only thing you can do to fix that is to uncheck the save as compatible PDF file option when saving .AI. In terms of PDF files from Adobe Illustrator:
(1)  Scaled images should not add anything to a PDF file size unless you take such images and attempt to upres them in Photoshop prior to creating PDF. There really is no benefit to be achieved by such upresing of the images; any competent RIP can do that itself just as well as Photoshop.
(2)  Transparency only adds to the PDF file size if you create PDF with transparency already flattened, or what I would better describe as ruined. Flattening transparency often causes large raster bitmaps and/or very complex groups of vector objects to be created to simulate transparency in an opaque imaging model (such as is supported by PostScript).
You obviously need to produce PDF that can be accommodated by the rest of your workflow. Since we don't know what that is and whether it conforms to current best industry practices, we cannot make an absolute recommendation for you.
However, generally speaking, the most reliable PDF print publishing workflow would generally require that you create PDF/X-4 using the PDF/X-4 PDF preset from Adobe Illustrator (or for that matter, from InDesign as well). PDF/X-4 supports full ICC color management (including spot colors), the entire PDF imaging model, and live transparency.
          - Dov