Bye, Bye PostScript?

Printers and designers, get ready for a big group hug, care of Adobe. While CEO Bruce Chizen and his corporate team were acquiring Macromedia over the past 12 months, the software giant's lead programmers have been busy with what analysts say could play out to be one of the more significant advancements in print workflow technology since the development of PostScript some 20 years ago: They've been writing new code for Adobe's next-generation printing platform.

Unveiled April 4 at the U.K. Ipex show, Adobe's PDF Print Engine is a direct, native-PDF print solution—in other words, PDF documents can be processed and output without the need to generate PostScript.

The new engine is compatible with PDF files generated from the family of Creative Suite programs: PhotoShop, Illustrator, InDesign and, of course, Acrobat. Eliminating the need to convert PDFs into PostScript for rendering strips away compatibility issues, which have plagued users wishing to implement sophisticated N-color and metadata workflows. JDF instructions and XMP file description tags are lost in a PDF-to-PS rendering workflow because all non-PS data is blocked.

“When a RIP receives PS data, it interprets the PS into an object list first, then flattens, rasterizes and screens the object list,” explains Hal Hinderliter, GAM's WorkFlow editor. “Adobe's Distiller has a PS interpreter built in, and the guts of any 'normal' PDF file have always been an unflattened object list. And that's still true, even when the PDF is directly exported from a CS application.”

Best of all, Adobe's PDF Print Engine workflow offers PDF 1.6 compatibility and native support for ICC-based color management, so transparency effects can be rendered live at the RIP with no need for prior flattening.

This represents the latest of Adobe's efforts to bring project designers and printers closer by improving the speed and quality of preparing complex jobs for print. Performance and productivity also will improve, says Adobe, as the new system's architecture is scalable and designed for concurrent processing across multiple processors. Also, memory management is automatic.

The PDF engine will be used as a platform by OEM partners that build a variety of print workflow products, from embedded RIPs to digital front ends, print previewers and virtual proofing systems. Its pervasive JDF control will be transparent to end users and new versions will be field-upgradable, says Adobe.

Adobe says its philosophy is that workflow should not be about technology trying to compensate for growing differences between design and print. Minimizing what it calls the “creativity chasm,” the new PDF engine strives for seamless workflows by enabling integrated solutions (including RIP functions) built on industry standards.

The product may certainly have an impact on software RIPs built on the previous generation of PDF creation systems. The Adobe PDF Print Engine is presently compatible with print system software running on the Microsoft Windows XP operating system and Server 2003 machines. MacOS, Linux, Solaris and Unix will be supported in future releases. www.adobe.com