Friday, October 29, 2010

History of PDF

For almost two decades I have been promoting the use of PDFs when dealing with customer files. Today most customers know what a PDF file is and successful printers use a PDF workflow to save time and money.

The PDF file format not only changed the print world but it has become one of the reasons that printed material can now be easily transferred over the Internet. PDF has been around since 1991 but wasn’t embraced by the prepress world until 1996. If you want to trace the history of PDF and how it has evolved over the past 20 years, visit Prepressure.com and read the history of PDFs. It is also a good tool to help train sales people as to why PDF is important. http://www.prepressure.com/pdf/basics/history.

Just because a customer knows what a PDF is doesn't mean that the PDF a printer receives from the customer will print properly. Printers still need to educate their customers about how to create a PDF file that means print industry standards. The easiest way is to have the customer use a software system such as Adobe Job Ready, PagePath's PDF2U, Global Graphic's Jaws or Prismatek's PrintThat. If customers want to create their own PDF files, printers should be supplying a custom Job Option for Acrobat.

It is hard to believe, but there are still printing companies that don't have a PDF workflow or use PDF files to help them cut costs and time. As the print world gets more competitive, the company's that have embraced this 20 year old technology will succeed.

No comments:

Post a Comment