PitStop Pro Workspaces
Have you heard about PitStop Pro workspaces? Probably not…
This feature is very powerful to improve your productivity with PitStop Pro, and allows you to create workspaces dedicated to specific use cases, such as inspection, correction, etc. but also correctly configures your Acrobat for prepress production.
Isn’t Acrobat correctly configured by default?
You have to know that the main market for Acrobat is office work ; therefore, the software is, by default, configured for this purpose. And these settings are not the ones we need for prepress!
Beyond the incorrect color profiles (but you have thought to change them in Bridge and synchronized them between all Creative Cloud applications 😉), there are, in particular, two settings that must be changed to allow Acrobat to correctly display your files:
- use local fonts
- overprint preview
Indeed, using local fonts must ALWAYS be deactivated. This forces Acrobat to use the embedded fonts of your PDF, and only these ones. If this check-box is checked, when Acrobat does not find a specific font in your files, it will seek for this font on your machine and use it, if exists. In other words, if you have just created a PDF file on your machine, this will always be the case, so you cannot (visually) check that the fonts are correctly embedded (the file is displayed as below, on the left side)!
However, if you send this file to someone who does not have the font, the file will be displayed without the correct font (because not embedded), with a result as below, on the right side.
Use local fonts on…
… but wrong display!
Use local fonts off
and correct display (with the error)
Alike, the overprint preview must ALWAYS be activated, under penalty of seeing objects … which will disappear when printing!
The default setting is “Only for PDF/X files”. Adobe has tried to find a universal setting, both for office and print, and offers with this setting to enable overprinting only for PDF/X files, believing that ANY PDF file for printing is a PDF/X file … which, of course, is not always the case!
Let’s choose the “Always” setting
And what about our workspaces?
You are right, let’s get back to our main topic…
As we mentioned above, PitStop Pro can control some features of Acrobat using workspaces. In addition, it is even possible to choose a default workspace, which is activated as soon as Acrobat is launched. Well, here is an automatic way to check that everything is in order in our production environment!
You will notice that it is possible to choose the elements you want to control, but also to tell how you want them to be adjusted (for example active or inactive).
In our example above (which corresponds to our workspace enabled by default, at start of Acrobat), we chose to make sure that the overprint preview is active, the use of local fonts is off, but also that the zoom value is “fit to page” (we like to see the entire document at the opening). In other sections, you will see that we have chosen to display page boxes by default, etc. Download the setting and see if it suits you or customize it to your taste!
In the video below (do not hesitate to put the video in full screen to better read the texts), we deliberately have put back the overprint preview to its original setting … PitStop warns us from the launch of Acrobat and tells us where to change it. Please note that this is the only setting you will need to manually adjust, the others (for example the use of local fonts) will be automatically adjusted without any action on your side.
Other settings?
We also have created a workspace for the inspection process, which opens the inspector (and prevents this panel from covering the document window), the object browser (excellent new feature of PitStop Pro 2019), the image matching panel and displays the document in wireframe mode as well page boxes.
You can give free rein to your inspirations and create your own environment that fits your context. Don’t hesitate to share your findings and settings in the comments below!
But where is that panel hidden?
Enfocus has hidden this feature, which is no longer present in the PitStop Pro menu (why?). You can find it in the “PitStop View > Workspaces” tools or via the Command-Option-U (Mac) or Control-Alt-U (Windows) keyboard shortcut. Last but not least, we can add this tool to the Quick Tools toolbar (which we advise you, to quickly switch from one space to another).
These settings (.ppws files) are imported and exported as you would do with a profile or action list, via the submenu behind the gear. This is also where you choose the setting you want to apply by default (i.e. when you start Acrobat).
Once you’ve (re)discovered this feature of PitStop Pro, we bet that you can not live without it anymore!
Share your impressions and creations in the comments below!
