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Dear all, 

can someone provide a helpful answer/solution to the following problem? 

PROBLEM: 

When using Affinity INSTEAD of Adobe CS, this often means that you will not have access to Adobe Acrobat and, on Mac, this means you also don’t have Adobe’s PDF printer driver. 
Of course you can write a PDF from Affinity, but for example, if you want to omit the Author from the PDF information, this seems not to be possible.

I found a workaround, but one that gives me other problems: 

I opened the resulting PDF (written from Affinity Publisher’s export option) in Mac preview, then chose "Print", and the option "save as PDF". 
By doing so, I was then able to change or omit the author's identity in the dialogue options.

BUT… 

Since I only have installed one physical printer (a laser printer), the resulting PDF from this process now uses the printers margins and cuts off parts on each side of the document (it is a bleed page). 

Thus, I was looking for a printer driver I could install on my iMac that I could choose alternatively to change the PDF Metadata, but without giving me new and inacceptable problems. 
Specifically, I was looking for a free PDF printer driver for Mac. I could’t find a single one.
It seems for Windows there are free printer drivers out there, but not for Mac. I don’t want to buy Acrobat or any other costly program like PDF expert at the moment. 

QUESTION: 

Does anyone know a free PDF printer driver for Mac that you could recommend to me? 
If not, any ideas on how to go about solving such a problem. 

FINAL WORD 

I have to admit that I’m relatively new to the Mac, so maybe I just didn’t get how to install a printer driver here, but I couldn’t manage to get it done. 

Your help and support are mightily welcome. 

Thank you very much! 

Thomas 

 

P.S. I know this is not exactly a problem or question related to Affinity Software, but since the combination of Mac and Affinity (instead of Adobe CS) should be a typical one, I guess more users might have the same problem. In a way, it’s a logical consequence of using Affinity on Mac, so I’m posting it here because I think, that actually MAKES it an Affinity problem, well … kind of. 

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2 hours ago, Thomas M. Braun said:

When using Affinity INSTEAD of Adobe CS, this often means that you will not have access to Adobe Acrobat and, on Mac, this means you also don’t have Adobe’s PDF printer driver. 

For the record, Acrobat X works up to Mojave (MacOS 10.14).

2 hours ago, Thomas M. Braun said:

Of course you can write a PDF from Affinity, but for example, if you want to omit the Author from the PDF information, this seems not to be possible.

View > Studio > Fields panel > Document Information > Author > delete your name
Then export.

2 hours ago, Thomas M. Braun said:

I found a workaround

Hm…
For example, Adobe Bridge should be still free to download and install (if you accept all of its CC rubbish on your drive, that is), and it gives you the option to edit any PDF metadata you like, import/export as XMP etc.
There are many other apps that can edit or strip file metadata.
So… going the "print to PDF" route really is an ugly workaround… ;)

2 hours ago, Thomas M. Braun said:

the resulting PDF from this process now uses the printers margins and cuts off parts on each side of the document (it is a bleed page). 

While you have the Print dialog open in any application, click on the Paper Size popup menu, select Manage Custom Sizes and add an oversize format with zero margins. It will be selectable in every app the next time you print to PDF.

2 hours ago, Thomas M. Braun said:

I was looking for a free PDF printer driver for Mac. I could’t find a single one.

Because we don't need any. Mac "Quartz PDF" is good enough for most uses.

But if you need more sophisticated PDF export than Quartz, use Affinity. ;)

Well, unless you need to export to PDF/X-1 or X-3 while you're making use of transparencies, layer effects, blend modes, spot colors and the like. Then there could be trouble because the PDF/X library licensed by Affinity is not as good as Adobe's PDF library.
PDF/X-4 seems to work pretty well though.

2 hours ago, Thomas M. Braun said:

I don’t want to buy Acrobat

Fair enough. Working mainly on El Capitan, I'm still making use of my old Acrobat X for any advanced pre-press checks that can't be handled by the built-in Preview app.

2 hours ago, Thomas M. Braun said:

I have to admit that I’m relatively new to the Mac

Ah, having now read thus far, that explains a lot… :D

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 4/10/2021 at 1:01 AM, loukash said:

For the record, Acrobat X works up to Mojave (MacOS 10.14).

Sure, but you need to buy it separately. 

On 4/10/2021 at 1:01 AM, loukash said:

View > Studio > Fields panel > Document Information > Author > delete your name
Then export.

Thanks! 

On 4/10/2021 at 1:01 AM, loukash said:

Hm…
For example, Adobe Bridge should be still free to download and install (if you accept all of its CC rubbish on your drive, that is), and it gives you the option to edit any PDF metadata you like, import/export as XMP etc.
There are many other apps that can edit or strip file metadata.
So… going the "print to PDF" route really is an ugly workaround… ;) 

Yes, I bought PDF Expert which works fine for several uses. However, it doesn’t support the prepress functions of Acrobat, of course. 

On 4/10/2021 at 1:01 AM, loukash said:

While you have the Print dialog open in any application, click on the Paper Size popup menu, select Manage Custom Sizes and add an oversize format with zero margins. It will be selectable in every app the next time you print to PDF.

Well, unfortunately, that doesn’t work with any printer driver. For example, I use a brother laser printer and it doesn’t allow these options in the print dialogue. 

 

On 4/10/2021 at 1:01 AM, loukash said:

But if you need more sophisticated PDF export than Quartz, use Affinity. ;)

The export options are sufficient in Affinity, yes. 

On 4/10/2021 at 1:01 AM, loukash said:

Well, unless you need to export to PDF/X-1 or X-3 while you're making use of transparencies, layer effects, blend modes, spot colors and the like. Then there could be trouble because the PDF/X library licensed by Affinity is not as good as Adobe's PDF library.
PDF/X-4 seems to work pretty well though.

Well, that’s exactly the problem. l thought there would possibly be a PDF tool with Acrobat’s versatility, but obviously this is not the case. 

On 4/10/2021 at 1:01 AM, loukash said:

Fair enough. Working mainly on El Capitan, I'm still making use of my old Acrobat X for any advanced pre-press checks that can't be handled by the built-in Preview app.

Ah, having now read thus far, that explains a lot… :D

Thanks for your answers. 

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