SWITCH 11 and Apago PDF Enhancer
One developer provides several products that don’t break the bank. Apago, located north of Atlanta, Georgia has been providing software to the Graphic Arts Industry for 20 years. Their products are affordable and can accomplish a complete web-to-print workflow when used with SWITCH. Apago has several products and currently three plugins for use in SWITCH:
PDF Shrink – High Volume Processing
PDF Shrink is Apago’s most popular product. A utility for either Mac or Windows, PDF Shrink reduces the footprint of your PDF. It works with a wizard so the technical questions are automatically answered for you. It picks the appropriate settings for the PDF requirements. You can batch PDF Shrink an entire drive of files. It takes advantage of multiple processors and can shrink multiple files at once.
PDF Enhancer – Just a Few Examples
PDF Enhancer is the ultimate PDF repurposing tool. It plugs in to SWITCH so processes can be fully automated and settings can be changed dynamically. Create flows in SWITCH and used PDF Enhancer plugin to resize, impose pages, add page numbers, Bates numbers or watermarks. Enhancer can also embed fonts and convert to outlines. All fonts can be converted to Type 3 to make PDFs more reliable for older systems.
ICC profiles are fully supported and you can color manage files using devicelink profiles for CMYK to CMYK, RGB to CMYK for printing or CMYK to RGB for web. Images can be treated differently from text and vector objects. PDF Enhancer will detect and convert text to black and deal with spot colours.
PDF Enhancer does a lot more as well. Manage file size with the same technology from PDF Shrink and optimize files. Add security settings and the Advanced Server Edition can also digitally sign a PDF. Use built in XMP data inside the PDF, add or update new XMP data like dates and copyright information. Assemble scanned pages and documents and manage image sizes.
PDFSpy – Get All the Information
This utility is the ultimate “get info” plugin for SWITCH. Use any piece of information inside a PDF to help determine its path in SWITCH. Preflight using PDFSpy and pass along details in XML format for use in other elements in a SWITCH flow. Archiving, Asset Management, and Preflight workflows in SWITCH can use this dynamic tool.
PDF Constructor – Build PDFs Your Way
PDF Constructor can create files built to your specification using industry standard XML. Create single or multipage PDF files using existing or dynamically created raster, vector or text content. Build PDFs with content that is ready to go to print. Use CMYK and Spot colours. Specify the Bleed and Trim. Use Type 1, TrueType or OpenType fonts – always embedded or subset if required. Produce web or screen ready documents with bookmarks, hyperlinks, actions and JavaScript. You can even build complete Acrobat Forms dynamically.
PSServices – Rasterize It
PSServices converts Postscript and PDF files to raster file formats such as JPEG and TIFF. PSServices can also distill PostScript and PDF to PDF. PSServices is compatible with Adobe Postscript 3 and PDF 1.7 (Acrobat 9). PSServices accepts as input PostScript (PS), Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) and PDF files. EPS files may have an embedded TIFF preview. The third plugin for SWITCH: Raster2pdf, converts image files in TIFF, JPEG, PNG, GIF, Scitex and other formats to PDF. These products can provide you with the means to create and support a web-to-print system. Apago information and pricing is available at http://www.apagoinc.com/. You can download a trial for most of the items mentioned. These products are priced right and provide all the tools needed to start your next project. Apago also provides custom development and are a member of the Crossroads SWITCH Community.