Color profiles in Pulbisher Export

[Harrington]

Well.  Here we are again folks. The perennial problem child of Harrington's book project. Now that I am uploading the book to the client's printer, it tells me the following:

"PDF CONTAINS ICC COLOR PROFILES: We request files with no color profiles assigned. Please convert all colors to grayscale for black and white images, or CMYK for color images and remove all color profiles. Saving a new PDF with the default setting of PDF/X-1a:2001 will address the issue. For best results, please correct the issue(s) listed. You may refer to the File Creation Guide for further instructions on creating a compliant PDF."

Have done all that and am still getting kicked back.

Here's the problem: Export in Publisher does not contain PDF/X-1a:2001. It only has PDF/X-1a:2003. I have tried working around this by setting profiles to gray in the B&W interior pages file then the same in pdf setup or CMYK, etc., but that hasn't made them happy. Ingram's live person response to this is to tell me that they want PDF/X-1a:2001. When I ask for suggested workarounds, they tell me they don't do editing.

*Sigh*

Any suggestions?

[NathanC]

Hi @Harrington,

The PDF/X-1a:2001 standard isn't supported by affinity's PDF export library so there aren't any workarounds in-app we can offer for exporting to this PDF version. Have you checked with the printer if they'll accept a PDF with the PDF/X 1a:2003 compliancy standard? As far as i'm aware this standard will ensure that images are exported without an embedded ICC profile (Just generic CMYK).

[GraceYoung]

Thank you so much for the info.

[Harrington]

NathanC, thanks for your reply. This is all OBE as I believe I found a way to backwards convert the 2003 pdf standard to a 2001 standard. This printer, (with whom I will never, ever work again, no matter what the client wants), will absolutely not accept anything other than the 2001 pdf standard export. They have had the backwards converted file for 9 days and haven't kicked it back yet, so fingers are crossed around the world!

 

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Harrington said:

This is all OBE as I believe I found a way to backwards convert the 2003 pdf standard to a 2001 standard.

It might be helpful to others if you could explain how you did that.

(BTW, I do not know what "OBE" means in this context but that is not important.)

[Harrington]

Hey RC-R!

OBE: Overcome By Events.

What I did was...I downloaded Scribus. A free book layout program that some (many?) non-designers use to construct their self-published books. I took the PDF/X 1a:2003 files of the book's interior pages and separate cover file, which I had exported from Publisher, and opened them one at a time with Scribus. I then saved them out of Scribus as a pdf. Scribus gives you lots of options in its "Compatibility" drop down menu, among them a save in the PDF/X 1a:2001 format when you save as PDF 1.3 (see attached screen shot. Note: I used my Mac to do the design/layout. The screen shot is from a Windows computer.)

Since the 2001 PDF standard is PDF 1.3, I have assumed this is 2001 compatible or actually a 2001 standard file. As I said above, nothing's been kicked back yet, so I am assuming we're good. If this helps one other person, it's been worthwhile. It took hours of research, trial and error, and hair-pulling to get to this point!