PDF Export Settings (version 2022 onwards)

PDF Export settings is a list of pre-defined settings for the PDF output.
You can create new groups of settings. These settings can be used to generate PDFs (in the editor or API) using this set of preferences.

Settings

On the left panel you see a list (or just default when you have none defined) of settings.
These settings have the names you specified.

Behind each setting is a set of preferences. These preferences are grouped in collapsible parts.
Selecting one on the left, shows the details to the right.

You will see “General” and “Info”. Click on them, to unfold.

Info

Under the Info tab, you’ll find the Item ID, to be used at your integration. And you can also see some XML definitions.

Open

General

In the general part, you can change the name of your setting.

Open

Under General; Other groups of settings you can change:

Document

• Create single output file

• Step pages 

  Step places multiple pages from the same document onto a single page.
  With the settings provided a table is created where each cell holds the following page of the document.

• Spreads outputs the pages as spreads

• Include non-printing layers Also Includes layers that are unchecked to “Include in output” will be in the PDF anyway.

• Include Bleed - outputs the bleed area in the PDF

  • Use values from document use the values for bleed specified in the document

  • Include Bleed Marks outputs the hairlines to show where the bleed end

  • Include Crop Marks outputs the hairlines to show the trim size of the page

  • The offset and width settings influence the offset o the marks and the width of the marks

• Include slug Outputs the slug area

  • Extra check to use the Document slug, vs the default slug

• Fast web view

  • Fast Web View enables a PDF document for page-at-a-time downloading from web servers. With Fast Web View, the web server sends only the requested page, rather than the entire PDF. This is especially important with large documents that can take a long time to download from a server.

• Embed fonts Includes the fonts in the PDF document

Embed Fonts is disabled by default. (for new presets)

When checked, you’ll have to confirm that you have the right Font license to include that font (or subset) in the PDF output.

Embed fonts > Use Font Subset

Using this option (only visible when choosing to embed fonts) only the characters that are present in the final output file will be included. This is especially beneficial for fonts that include many characters, glyphs, or support multiple languages. By only including a subset of characters, PDF file sizes will be reduced, increasing transfer speeds and making workflows more efficient.

NOTE: Because of the significant impact on file size, this option is enabled by default.

• Create PDF Layers Create the layers you used in the document in the PDF

• Include annotations

• Include links

• Include bookmarks

• Convert CMYK Black CHILI colors

  • This does NOT apply to placed assets

Allows you to convert the K component in CMYK to the entered values.

PDF Info

This part contains meta-data to be written in the PDF document
You can have some information about the document filled in automatically with the use of patterns.

Standards & Output

This part allows you to specify which pdf standard/version to use when creating a PDF file.

• PDF version: PDF version 1.4 to 1.7

• Output PDF standard: PDF/X-4 or PDF/VT-1

When the PDF/VT-1 standard was selected following parameters are available:

• Output intent: specify the ICC profile you want to use as output intent. 

  • ContentIdentifier and RegistryName: these are ICC profile specific and need to be specified

• Debug VT content: adds additional information to the created files for debugging purposes

• VT Metadata: PDF/VT introduces the concept of document part metadata (DPM) to support, optimized efficient processing for repeating text, graphic or image content. This part will allow you to configure the metadata added to the file or record.

  • Use these to create, delete or move the metadata 

  • Name: the name of the node

  • Save to: determines where to save the metadata of that specific node (root, record or root & record)

  • Target Key Loc: Root\Child\Child (f.e. Sender\Address\)

  • Source: 3 possibilities

    • fixed string: a text string 

    • variable: a variable inside the document

    • datasource: a column of a datasource (=field of a record)

  • Value: specify the value for the source (string, name of variable, name of datasource column). This is added as the last value after the target location.
    (f.e. fixed string "City", this will be added after the target location to result in Sender\Address\City, another node could than be Country to result in Sender\Address\Country)

New since version 2022

You can convert the colors of all objects in the PDF to a destination color profile.

If you do not specify an Output PDF Standard, you have to choose a destination profile for color conversion. You can also choose to embed/tag all converted objects with the selected profile.

If you do specify an Output PDF Standard, you also have to specify the Output Intent. In this case the Output Intent is used as destination profile for color conversion.

About the color conversion:

• Spot colors are not converted.

• Black point compensation is used for color conversion using the relative colorimetric rendering intent.

• Color conversion preserves black objects. Color definitions using just the black channel remain black. Furthermore, RGB and Lab color definitions for gray get converted to Black only where applicable.

Images

New since version 2022

Settings that affect the quality and file size of the included images in the PDF output.

You can select an Image Quality Preset or choose to customize all individual fields.

The available presets are:

• "Original"

• "High Quality"

• "Small File Size"

Here are the downsampling and compression settings used by these presets:

Below the Image Quality Preset, you can choose to customize the downsampling and compression settings for Color, Grayscale and Monochrome images. In that case the Image Quality Preset will automatically be set to “Custom”.

Downsampling

• "Off": no downsampling is applied

• "Average downsampling": downsampling is applied with the average downsampling interpolation method

• "Subsampling": downsampling is applied with the subsampling interpolation method

• "Bicubic downsampling": downsampling is applied with the bicubic downsampling interpolation method

Downsample to (pixels per inch)

Set the target resolution (in ppi) for images in the output. This field is disabled when "Downsampling" is set to "Off".

For images above (pixels per inch)

Only images with a resolution above this threshold will be downsampled. This field is disabled when "Downsampling" is set to "Off".

Compression

The available options for Color Images and Grayscale Images are:

• "Retain existing": retain existing compression

• "JPEG2000": JPEG2000 compression method is applied (this compression method can be lossy or lossless). This option is only available when "PDF Version" is set to "PDF 1.5" or later (in the "Standards & Output" section)

• "JPEG": JPEG compression method is applied (this is a lossy compression method, meaning that it removes image data and may reduce image quality)

• "ZIP": ZIP compression method is applied (this is a lossless compression method, meaning that image data is not removed, image quality is not affected)

The available options for Monochrome Images are:

• "Retain existing": retain existing compression

• "CCITT Group 3": CCITT Group 3 compression method is applied

• "CCITT Group 4": CCITT Group 4 compression method is applied

• "ZIP": ZIP compression method is applied

• "Run Length": Run Length compression method is applied

Compression Quality

This field is only visible for Color Images and Grayscale Images and only enabled when "Compression" is set to "JPEG" or "JPEG2000".

The available options are:

• "Minimum"

• "Low"

• "Medium"

• "High"

• "Maximum"

• "Lossless": this option is only available when "Compression" is set to "JPEG2000"

Please take into account that PDF generation can take longer when using image downsampling and/or compression, because of the required image processing.

Remove invisible image data

New since version 2022

You can crop out all the image data in the PDF that is invisible after the images are fitted into frames. This can significantly reduce the file size of the PDF without any visible difference.

Some things to take into account when using this setting:

• When "Compression" is set to "Retain existing" images will be recompressed at maximum quality after the invisible image data is removed. If you do not want this you have to specify the compression method (not "Retain existing") and compression quality of your choice.

• Depending on the use case, it can happen that the PDF will grow in file size after the invisible image data is removed, but in most common use cases it will reduce the file size.

• PDF generation can take longer when removing invisible image data, because of the required image processing.

Bar Width Reduction

“Dot gain” is part of every printing process and leads to thin elements widening because of the physics of the printing equipment. (See clear blog on Dot Gain on this blogpost and on this wiki page)

Since bar codes exist of mostly thin lines, the effect is more present in this case.
To compensate the effect, you can reduct the bar widths of the lines in the bar code.

Sample values for dot gain are approximately 100µm (0.1 mm) with flexographic
printing, and 30µm (0.03 mm) with offset printing. The smaller the bar codes, the more precise must be worked.

The values you enter in the form are in millimeter. Our advise is to test the settings for you workflow.

Drop Shadow Quality

Set the quality for drop shadow. You can specify this differently for Text frames, and other frames.

If you leave the quality empty or 0, it will use the maximum quality.

Between 1 and 100 will raise the quality, up to 100%.

Security

Secure your PDF output with a watermark and a password. Password can be set separately for owners and users.

Watermark Places a watermark in the document.

• When adding text watermarks to your document, it's important to use only characters within the range of U+0021 to U+007D. Using characters outside of this range can result in unexpected or incorrect watermarks. Therefore, it's recommended to use only A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and a few special characters such as !, @, #, $, and %. For further details on the available characters, refer UTF-8 or UTF-16 encoding tables.

Owner password Required to change the document

User password Required to view / print the document

Allow content extraction When set, the user can extract text / images from the document

Allow modifications When set, the user can modify the document

Allow printing when set, the user can print the document

Datasource

When set, you can specify the following parameters:

PDF Name pattern

Provides the name patters according to elements explained below the field.

Max rows sets the maximum amount of records that will output. Records above this amount are not outputted.

Rows / PDF defines the amount of records per output pdf. 

Unspecified content assigns objects that are not assigned to either the variable or the background content.

Create separate background pdf creates a separate pdf file with all the objects that are tagged as background,. The variable content pdf's will be created separately

Include background layer in variable PDF files defines if the non-variable elements are included in the variable PDF. This setting is ignored if "Create separate background PDF" is false.

Minimum Success rate

In a perfect world, a variable data output batch job, will generate all records in the resulting PDF. However, it happens that a record contains invalid information / characters or other issues. For these cases, we introduced the “Minimum success rate” setting. This allows administrators to set a threshold for the percentage of records that must process successfully for the PDF output to generate:

• 100% = all records must be successful - PDF generation is aborted after the first failed record and no PDF is returned (default behavior).

• 75% = 75% of records must be successful - PDF generation is aborted if more than 25% of the records fail to process and no PDF is returned.

• 0% = all records are processed - PDF generation is not aborted when a record fails and a PDF is returned for any successful record.

In the event a failed record is encountered, a report XML file is generated and included in the output ZIP file. This report contains an overview of the failed records and the reason for failure.

Guides

Error handling

Set the level of sensitivity, when a PDF task should fail.