5 Setting up PDF HandShake with HELIOS Admin
PDF HandShake can be set up easily from any of your clients.
In this section we discuss using HELIOS Admin to set up high-quality color matching for the PDF files you want to print, as well as specifying parameters for layout generation (if you are also using ImageServer).
Before opening the Admin program you should mount the "ICC-Profiles" volume. This volume has been created automatically during installation and contains a large number of profiles you can use now. If you have your own profiles and store them in another location, you should move them to the "ICC-Profiles" volume. Inside the top-level folders "Printer", "Scanner", and "Monitor" you can create subdirectories at any time (Fig.
3).
Fig. 3: Mounting and using the "ICC-Profiles" volume
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5.2 PDF HandShake options
5.2.1 Server-wide settings for PDF
First, open the
Lists menu and select
PDF HandShake Settings to open the dialog for the PDF HandShake server settings (Fig.
4).
Fig. 4: Opening the
PDF HandShake Settings dialog
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The pop-up menus allow you to select an RGB and a CMYK default source profile for your PDF documents. These profiles will be used as input profiles for color data transforms in the case that the PDF files you want to print have not yet been tagged with specific profiles.
The default profiles shown in Fig.
4 are set automatically after product installation. They are both available in the "ICC-Profiles" volume on your server. You can define your own server defaults by choosing
Other- from the pop-up menus. American customers, for instance, should switch to a SWOP CMYK profile.
Exclude
White,
Black or
Gray colored objects in PDF files from color transformation, so that they preserve the selected color(s), even if color matching is done. For example, gray text and vectors in Gray/RGB/CIE-Lab/Indexed color spaces are detected and converted to
Gray only for CMYK output, if the
Gray option is checked. These options are available if ImageServer is installed. Otherwise they will be grayed out (see
5.3 "More options for ImageServer users").
5.2.2 Printer queue settings for PDF
To set up printer queue specific parameters, open the desired printer from the
Printers list and then select the
OPI/ICC tab to open the dialog shown in Fig.
5.
Fig. 5: Defining
OPI/ICC settings for a specific printer queue
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Check ICC Profiles for Pictures
This option is also meant for OPI only. You may check or uncheck it - this does not make any difference as long as ImageServer is not installed on your server.
The
Default Printer Profile item lets you choose the correct ICC profile for your output device and, at the same time, serves to switch color matching on for this printer queue. The pop-up menu contains four different options:
- None
Switches explicit color matching off on the queue. This does not mean that there is no color transformation at all. If you print separations and your PDF files contain e.g. RGB or Lab objects, these objects will be transformed into CMYK "behind the scenes". For these transformations, the server uses a default CMYK standard which is Euroscale. If you do not want to work on that Euroscale basis you should specify a printer profile using the Other- option from the pop-up menu.
- EBU RGB
May be selected if you want to "print" to an RGB device, e.g. an imagesetter.
- Lab D65
This setting is best suited if you want to select a device-independent output color space and leave the separation to the final PostScript RIP. In that case, you have to use a Level 2 (or 3) output device. The RIP will then be initialized with a specific color rendering dictionary (CRD) and, using this dictionary, will perform the separation into CMYK. This workflow makes sense if you are sending your documents (e.g. a magazine) to different production sites. Your print job is not yet separated for a given output device and the Lab D65 color space is device-independent. The different RIPs then transform the color data into the gamut of the respective printer/or press and the output results should all be identical.
If you intend to define a default printer profile that is not listed in the pop-up menu, you may select a profile from a repository on your server by clicking the
Browse- button.
Here, you can select the correct profile for your proof printer. This item will only become available if you have selected a default printer profile other than
EBU RGB or
Lab D65.
Like described in
Default Printer Profile above, you may choose a default proof profile that is not listed in the pop-up menu by clicking the
Browse- button.
Note: For more details about the color matching of PDF files during printing, you may read the paragraph Profile information in 4 "Before getting started".
For background information about color matching and proofs, please refer to A 2 "Colors, color matching, proofing - basic concepts".
PostScript 3/ DeviceN Output
The
PostScript 3/DeviceN Output checkbox applies only to OPI image replacement. If you want to print a PDF document with output optimized to use the PostScript 3/DeviceN feature, you must print it using the "pdfprint" command line tool with the appropriate option (see
8.1 "pdfprint"):
pdfprint -o preservedevicen
5.3 More options for ImageServer users
5.3.1 Server-wide settings for PDF (OPI)
With ImageServer installed on your server, you have several options in the
PDF HandShake Settings dialog Fig.
6. Open the dialog as described in
5.2.1 "Server-wide settings for PDF".
Fig. 6:
PDF Settings (ImageServer installed)
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PDF OPI Layout Generation activates PDF services on the OPI server, meaning that it activates the generation of EPSF layouts for PDF high-res files. Please note that the
Create Layouts option in the "Volume" dialog must be checked as well if you want to enable the generation of layouts (see the ImageServer manual). If
Create Layouts is checked and
PDF OPI Layout Generation unchecked, this would mean that the OPI server will automatically generate layouts in this volume - but not for PDF files.
Antialiasing is a method of smoothing contours. This option is only meant for screen previews of EPSF files the OPI server has generated from PDF originals. Even though antialiasing is applied to all elements within the document, the effect is most evident for text elements. An example for antialiasing is shown in Fig.
7. The first EPSF file has been created with antialiasing, the second one without it. The readability of the first file is much better on a monitor.
Antialias Screen Preview is active by default.
Fig. 7: Example of an antialias screen preview
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5.3.2 Printer queue settings for PDF (OPI)
Highlight a printer in the
Printers list and then open the
OPI/ICC settings dialog as shown in Fig.
8. You will find that the dialog did not change compared to the one you may already know from setting up your ImageServer queues. All options in the dialog are now available for PDF files as well.
Note: See 5.2.1 "Server-wide settings for PDF" above for details about the default profiles.
Fig. 8: Setting up a queue on a server running ImageServer
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Please see the respective chapter in your ImageServer manual for detailed information on the above dialog.
Check ICC Profiles for Pictures
Note that the functionality of the
Check ICC Profiles for Pictures option has been expanded. This option will let the OPI server check for every image file or PDF document-
- -whether all image profiles that have been tagged to any of the image files are available, and
- -whether the images and files in the print job are tagged at all.
The server will automatically stop the print job if a single profile is missing or if a file is not yet tagged.
5.4 ICC rendering intent settings (HELIOS Admin)
This new feature offers different "strategies" for rendering an image file from one color space to another. There are 5 settings (
Automatic,
Perceptual,
Relative Colorimetric,
Saturation,
Absolute Colorimetric), which are freely selectable in the HELIOS Admin
OPI/ICC menu (Fig.
9):
Fig. 9: HELIOS Admin "ICC Intents" dialog window
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Note: Please keep the intent setting on Automatic unless you have a special reason to change it. Your profiling software will explain the intents meanings.
HELIOS Admin features a spot color editor which enables the user to define a preview color for a given spot color name. This allows PDF HandShake to include spot color objects in the composite preview, e.g. when working with pre-separated PDF documents. The spot color editor is described in the HELIOS ImageServer manual.
