The Adobe Acrobat Professional application is an invaluable resource that can help you streamline your workflow, avoid production delays, and cut your overhead in unexpected ways. To help our customers learn about and maximize the application’s many features, we will be providing explanations of specific features in each of the next few issues of this newsletter. 

Today, we focus on Output Preview (Advanced > Print Production > Output Preview), which is arguably the most useful window in Acrobat Pro. It allows users to precisely analyze the color makeup of a PDF file and detect potential color problems.

Viewing Color Makeup
With the Output Preview window open, move your cursor over a PDF file, and you’ll see a reading of the CMYK color makeup. These readings enable you to verify that the colors used in your files translated to PDF correctly. Recently released Acrobat 9 will also give you a reading of total ink coverage, which makes checking TAC easier.

Detecting Color Problems
Another valuable feature of Output Preview is the ability to turn off color plates to check for color problems in PDF files, such as instances of 4/c black type that should be black only. Simply de-select the check box next to the intended color and check to see if the given element is still visible, indicating that it was formatted with additional colors.

To illustrate, let’s use the case of black. To check that given type is formatted with black only, de-select the check box for black. You should see nothing where the black-only type should be. If you still see the type rendered on your screen with the Black turned off, then you know the text was incorrectly formatted as a multi-ink black.

You can also verify spot colors using this method. A common problem for publishers is to inadvertently submit 2/c (black and one spot color) files that have one or more page graphics created in the CMYK colorspace. To check for this problem, you would deselect black and the one spot color. If you still see these page graphics rendered, then they were formatted with colors other than black and the spot color.