Robert Williams Posted March 8, 2020 Share Posted March 8, 2020 I'm creating a children's picture book in Affinity Publisher. Based on this forum's helpful advice (my thanks again), I specified the bleed dimension for the interior pages in the Document Setting dialogue and created the design as spreads, and this has worked well. HOWEVER, when I export the resulting file as a PDF/X-1a or PDF/X-3, the Export box will NOT allow me to specify "Include bleed" along with that PDF spec. I can only check Include bleed if I export to "PDF (press-ready)". BUT my book publisher (IngramSpark) demands a "press-ready" PDF of either PDF/X-1a or PDF/X-3, NOT a generic "press-ready" PDF. My impression is that nearly every printer/publisher requires some flavor of PDF/X. I've found a workaround through Acrobat Pro, but that shouldn't be necessary. Am I missing something? What's going on here? Why can't I include bleed with a PDF/X? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fixx Posted March 8, 2020 Share Posted March 8, 2020 I would think that if you select PDF-X and then add tick to "include bleed" it will still be valid PDF-X. Just the preset name disappears. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Williams Posted March 8, 2020 Author Share Posted March 8, 2020 The "disappearing preset" seems counter-intuitive, though, and counter-productive. Test PDFs made this way and then opened in Acrobat Pro do not verify in Acrobat's Preflight tools as PDF/X-3 compliant, at least for me. I've also made test PDFs with the PDF/X preset intact and the "include bleed" box unchecked, by necessity, and the resulting PDFs do not in fact include the bleed areas, so they are useless for printing pages that have to bleed. My workaround has been to create PDFs with the "Include bleed" box checked and no PDF preset at all, and then converting the resulting generic PDF in Acrobat Pro to be PDF/X-3 compliant. This seems to work and the Preflight will then verify the PDF as X-3 compliant, but I don't see why we should have to go clear around the barn through (and pay for) Acrobat Pro, when Affinity Publisher should itself be able to make a compliant PDF that includes bleed. I'm baffled. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fixx Posted March 9, 2020 Share Posted March 9, 2020 I did a test document with and without bleed and both versions show in Acrobat "PDF/X version "PDF/X-3:2003"". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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