PDF export (and import)

[Chris Patmore]

The issue with imported PDFs not rendering the embedded fonts has been well documented and complained about, so I hope it's something that can be remedied. It is definitely something that will be stopping a lot of professional designers making the swap. Although, being able to edit imported PDFs is very handy, if you have the necessary fonts.

The issue I have had is with exported PDFs for print on demand, and Magcloud specifically. I just finished a 60 page magazine (plus cover) that had been done in InDesign for the previous 49 issues. I manually recreated all the master pages and style sheets rather than wait for the much rumoured IDML import. Everything went fine. The magazine was completed on deadline. When it came to exporting the PDF to upload to Magcloud for printing, that's when the fun started. Magcloud requires 3mm bleed top and bottom and 6mm on the outside edge. That was easy to set up on the document. However the print PDFs for Magcloud don't require crop marks, just the specified amount of bleed, so no bleed on the inside edge, but Publisher puts 6mm of bleed on both the inside and outside edges on spreads. Bleed on the inside edge is fine with traditional litho printing where the pages are trimmed, but not for PoD. The Front and back covers, which are single pages, do not have the extra 6mm on the inside edges. I ended up taking the PDFs into Acrobat Pro and cropping off the extra bleed, and although the PDF was now the right size, Magcloud was still detecting the unwanted bleed and giving an import error. After several different attempts and confirming the document measurements I gave up and ended up importing the PDF into InDesign and making the final PDF that way, because InDesign lets you specify "Use Document Bleed Settings" and gives you exactly that. In the end I was thinking I might as well have just stuck with InDesign, and may have to continue using it until these PDF glitches can be resolved. Exporting the PDF for our digital edition went without any problems as it doesn't require bleed.

I have figured out a relatively simple workaround for the export problem for the print edition, if I decide to continue using Publisher, but it will require an extra step using Acrobat, or another PDF editor for the digital edition. But a workaround isn't a solution. If Publisher is to be taken seriously by small, independent publishers, as well as freelance designers, who use print on demand as well as digital platforms for the same document, then these PDF issues need to be sorted sooner rather than later. Otherwise, the layout and creation side of the whole suite is great, but the import and export bottlenecks are choking its functionality as a pro package.

[garrettm30]

Hi Chris,

If I may distill down the current issue you’re having, it seems you are saying that the principal problem in this case is that the PDF exports include an inner bleed which you do not want. Is that correct?

If that is the case, then as the software allows one to set an inner bleed to zero, then that should be respected. If it is not being respected, I would consider that a bug. However, I made a quick test, and it seems that the bleed is being respected for me. I set up a quick 4-page A4 document with 3mm bleed on top and bottom, 6mm on outer edge, and 0mm bleed on inner. I drew light-gray rectangles on all the pages, excluding the bleed (in other words, the bleed should be the only part that is left white). Then I exported with the print PDF preset, exporting “all pages” rather than as spreads.

I am attaching the resulting PDF. Visually, and by measurements, it looks like the 0mm inner bleed was respected. Can you confirm? If so, then maybe we have either a setting wrong on your document, or else you have found some use case where Publisher is misbehaving.

It is probably worth mentioning that I used Publisher 1.7.3, the current release.

bleed_test.pdf

bleed_test.afpub

[garrettm30]

A little follow-up. I found what seems to be the same issue reported as a bug in another thread (below). The last post there seems to indicate it works fine if you export all pages, but if you export a page range, it will fail in the way you have observed. As a test, I tried exporting my test document above with just pages 1–2, and the second page was in fact wider than the first, apparently including the left edge of page 3 on inner bleed. 

A Serif moderator has logged this as a bug. Here is the thread for your reference:

For a workaround until the bug is fixed, if you are exporting a range of pages, you could try exporting the whole thing, and then deleting the extra pages from another program.

[Chris Patmore]

I am using the latest version and the document is correctly set up. I have been using DTP (as it was called when I started) for over 30 years, so I do have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing. The issue is with pages that are spreads. Single pages, such as front and back cover export correctly. When they are spreads, the individual pages export with the bleed on the inner edge. As I pointed out in my OP, having the extra bleed on the inside edge is fine for traditional litho printing that needs crop marks and will be placed into imposition software, but for digital printing of print-on-demand it doesn't require crops. Hopefully the Affinity/Serif boffins can fix in the next update, and time-consuming workarounds don't really cut it.

[garrettm30]

2 minutes ago, Chris Patmore said:

I have been using DTP (as it was called when I started) for over 30 years, so I do have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing.

I hope you understand that I am not calling into question your experience. I’ve seen it done, but personally I have no use for that sort of thing.

I merely wanted to make some suggestions to help get to the bottom of this, as there could have been multiple possibilities. For example, it could have been a bug, or it could have been a misconfiguration, not necessarily because of any fault of your own, but because this is new software and it is easy to miss something, whether because it is simply new or because there is some UX issue that is not as clear as it should be. Or another scenario is that a document I have that seems to work, while you have one that does not, instead of being a case of blaming one’s experience, is rather an opportunity to find where is the point of failure between the two documents, which in turn is useful in either discovering a bug or an opportunity for UX improvement. Then there is always the possibility of a simple “duh” moment for all of us, including that I simply misunderstood what someone else’s post.

Without knowing each other, it is not always easy to tell intent, but I can tell you that I only intended to be helpful if I could, which it appears I may have failed in this case. Maybe at least the link to one of the bug reports might be of more use to you.

 

[Chris Patmore]

I saw on the other post about the issue, the moderator posted that it only happened when a page range was put in the export settings, which in fact is what I had done as I got an error the first two times I tried to make the PDF, but when I put in the page range, for all the pages, it made the PDF but with the extra bleed. I have just tried exporting it again without a page range, and although I did get an error on the first try, on the second attempt it came out correctly. They have acknowledged that it is a bug and will be working on fixing it. So there was a slight user error on my part, but on the upside it did uncover a bug.