Premium Commentary & Analysis

Adobe PDF Print Engine 5: PDF 2.0 Coming Soon to a DFE Near You

Adobe announced Adobe PDF Print Engine 5, their core technology used by many Digital Front Ends driving print production equipment. This release makes PDF 2.0 print-related features available for OEM implementation.

By David Zwang
Published: July 24, 2018

PREMIUM MEMBERSHIP CONTENT

This article is part of our premium member access. If this commentary & analysis is relevant to your business, please consider supporting us by becoming a member.

FOR FULL SITE ACCESS: LOGIN OR BECOME A MEMBER

Tweet Email Print Order Reprints

David Zwang travels around the globe helping companies increase their productivity, margins and market reach. He specializes in production optimization, strategic business planning, market analysis, and related services to companies in the vertical media communications market. Clients have included printers, manufacturers, retailers, publishers, premedia and US Government agencies. He can be reached at david@zwang.com.

Discussion

By Mark Lewiecki on Jul 27, 2018

David: This is a good analysis of the new feature in Adobe PDF Print Engine 5. However, I want to correct one of your points on in-RIP processing of CxF spectral data, which can be used to define spot and specialty colors. Color Management Modules (CMMs) convert color data, usually through a Profile Connection Space (PCS) such as CieLab. For RIPs based on the PDF Print Engine, our OEM solution partners have the choice of using their own proprietary CMM, or the Adobe Color Engine (ACE), which is bundled with the PDF Print Engine. Your article states that CxF metadata can be passed to Adobe’s CMM. However, the “Adobe CMM” was a stand-alone implementation of ACE, but is no longer available. The ICC (International Color Consortium) is working on a new standard called iccMAX. Among other things, it can be used to exchange and process spectral data. Although it is not yet an official ISO standard, we expect that some of our partners will soon implement iccMAX-based color management in their CMMs. APPE 5 can extract CxF from PDF 2.0 files, and pass the data to these CMMs. However, the Adobe Color Engine does not currently handle CxF data.