Product of the Week: Enfocus Instant PDF 3.5.(Product/Service Evaluation)

Enfocus' PDF quality-control program is more than just a bargain system for eliminating errors, finds Simon Eccles.

Enfocus Instant PDF 3.5 is a quality-control gateway for the creation of PDF documents at a customer site, followed by their automatic upload to a service provider. It ensures that PDFs will output correctly in a professional production cycle, mainly for print but also for the web if needed.

For print, its core function is to control the creation of PDFs to pre-set specifications then run pre-flight checks for items that cannot be printed (such as RGB colours, too-low resolutions, JavaScripts, and multimedia clips). For the web it looks for non-RGB colours and too-high resolutions. If it finds faults, some of these can be rectified, by using an 'action list'.

The alterations can be anything from adding page numbers to a file to remapping specific Pantone colours. A number of action lists are supplied and it's possible to import new ones, but Instant PDF cannot create new actions itself.

For that you need Enfocus' full-function PDF pre-flight and editing program, PitStop Professional.

It can also validate and convert PDFs into the print-specific PDF/X subsets, which have strict rules that exclude anything unprintable. These include PDF/X-1a (2004), PDF/X-3 and the even narrower 'Ghent Workgroup' PDF/X-Plus sets.

When files pass the Instant PDF checks, it embeds a validation certificate into the PDF so …