Why Save Your QuarkXpress PDF Files To Outline?

Thursday, December 17th 2009

It is very important to save your QuarkXpress PDF files to Outline when sending your artwork supplied printing jobs to any printer. This is because problems do some times occur when a PDF file passes through a RIP, when making printing plates. It is very much like putting your seat belt on when driving a car. It is unlikely that an accident will occur, but having it on is still a worth while precaution that only takes a few seconds. Typically the problems would include text not being sharp or going missing completely.

A RIP takes the digital information in your PDF about fonts and graphics that describes the appearance of your file and translates it into an image composed of individual dots that the imaging device ( plate maker ) can output. The plate is then put on the printing press and your job produced.

Unless you deal with the day to day manufacture of printing jobs and the problems that can occur when creating plates, it is unlikely that you would be aware of this particular problem. However there is not a single printer in the country who has not experienced problems with this particular glitch. It is just the limitations of the RIP technology and that in many printing firms the people on the front desk are not fully aware of the problems being experienced on the production floor.

At Modern Print, all staff are fully trained in printing technology so they can give you the advice and help that others don't.

To save your text to Outline in QuarkXpress for PDF just select the whole job and then select 'Style' in your menu bar at the top of the screen followed by 'Text to Box' and that's it! Then continue with your normal PDF creation procedures.

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