This was a very interesting post over on Markzware’s blogs called, ‘Advice- send both a press-ready PDF and the native file‘. What is most interesting about this post is the fact that they recommend sending to the printer BOTH the Portable Document Format (PDF) and the native or source job the print-work was created in. (Meaning QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign, Corel!Draw, etc file.)
What is so ironic is the fact that one has to send both. The reality is, more and more printers are taking open or the original job files again, packaged or collected up with all fonts and images in one folder. With tools like FlightCheck Professional, you can even compress the job, making it ready for immediate upload or delivery to the print-shop. Thus, one must ask, what is the future of PDF in graphic arts- especially when you see Adobe themselves adding FLASH movies and animations and making it more online savy than a pure printers tool.
The debate will continue, but first communicate with your printer, than preflight and then the last step, weather a print ready-PDF, open print-job or both will be more guaranteed for success.
