pdfToolbox 8.0 focuses on usability and versatility

Berlin – callas software, market leader for automated PDF quality control and archival solutions, today releases a major update for its pdfToolbox product line: pdfToolbox 8. pdfToolbox 8 introduces an all-new Object Inspector tool for examination of PDF documents, the ability to add dynamic text, barcodes or more complex content using HTML templates and uniquely complete support for multi-channel color spaces and PDF/X-5n. And those are just the major features...

"Deciding what will be included in a major update for pdfToolbox is always difficult", explains Olaf Drümmer, CEO of callas software. "pdfToolbox is implemented by our customers in very diverse workflows and obviously there is no shortage to what those customers would like to see in the next version. For this update we decided to focus on usability – features that would make it easier for customers to work with their trouble files – and versatility. pdfToolbox once was a mere preflight tool, but today it’s an all-round multi-purpose tool to deal with PDF and that’s something our customers greatly appreciate."

Full support for multi-channel workflows and PDF/X-5n

pdfToolbox 8 makes it possible to convert any PDF document to a multi-channel color space using an appropriate ICC Profile. This means RGB or CMYK content can easily be converted into hexachrome, CMYK + Red or any other multi-channel scenario; this is of critical importance for packaging and – increasingly – all digital workflows. Also included is support for the creation of PDF/X-5n files, an ISO standard that is designed to support such color spaces in prepress data exchange.

Integrated barcode library

In many workflows barcodes need to be added to documents at some point in the workflow. To enable this pdfToolbox 8 now includes a full, professional barcode library that can add over a hundred different types of barcodes to PDF documents. From 1D to 2D barcodes or QR codes, pdfToolbox 8 covers it all.

Adding dynamic text

Adding page numbers to a PDF document is a recurring request and with the new “Add dynamic text” fixup, pdfToolbox 8 makes this possible. The fixup allows adding a wealth of information, either static text or dynamic text on a PDF document using a number of different fonts, colors and placement options.

The power of pdfChip

In February 2015, callas software released the new pdfChip product; a powerful HTML to high-quality PDF converter. Now pdfToolbox 8 integrates the power of pdfChip to support scenarios where the content to be added to a PDF document is more complex than a barcode or dynamic text. With some knowledge of HTML, CSS and optionally JavaScript it is possible to decorate PDF files in any way necessary in your workflow.

Object Inspector – detailed examination of PDF documents

Using preflight, pdfToolbox has always been capable of quickly detecting problems or potential problems. Using the visualizer many preflight problems (such as bleed errors or ink overruns) can quickly be diagnosed visually. The Object Inspector adds to that the ability to see a comprehensive list of properties for all objects in your PDF documents. Users can click on a document to see which objects are used in that location, and examine all properties (font, color, transparency, resolution…) of those objects. A great tool to pinpoint pesky problems detected by preflight or simply to pick apart a troublesome PDF document.

Optimization of existing features

Of course pdfToolbox 8 also introduces a host of smaller updates to existing features. Two important ones are quicker processing of big PDF documents and support for TIFF export with result files of any dimension.

In some workflows customers have to process very big documents; documents that are very complex or – while relatively simple – contain a huge amount of pages. pdfToolbox 8 received a number of important optimizations to deal with such documents without delays or problems.

For years, pdfToolbox has been capable of saving each page of a PDF document as a PNG, JPEG or TIFF image but that output so far was limited to 32.000 pixels in any dimension. In pdfToolbox 8 that limit has been completely removed for TIFF files (with the exception of the 2GB file size limit imposed by the TIFF format itself). This makes it possible to generate high-resolution TIFFs of even the biggest files.