On 7 June 2017, the Ghent Workgroup (GWG) announced that Ricoh has successfully achieved GWG PDF preflight certification, addressing the highest level of preflight capability for reliable PDF processing. Simon Tapley, workflow solutions manager, Ricoh Europe, explains that as an active member of the GWG, Ricoh is now well placed to give input to and help promote this valuable standards activity, which is designed to help ease the transmission of PDF content between creative professionals and print service providers (PSPs).
Tapley expands, “This certification also allows us to develop and integrate tools within our TotalFlow software solutions to help our clients adopt and work with PDF standards (like PDF/X-4) and automate the checking and correction of files against these standards.” He explains that the integration of the Enfocus Pitstop Library within Ricoh’s TotalFlow solutions (TotalFlow Production Manager and TotalFlow BatchBuilder) allows users to configure PDF preflight as an integrated and automated workflow step.
It also provides support for the latest GWG preflight standards enabling users to take advantage of this directly within our solutions and ensure files comply with these standards. This has allowed Ricoh to receive GWG certification for the very latest GWG preflight profiles and demonstrates Ricoh’s commitment to providing easy-to-use, automated solutions that allow PSPs to produce high-quality output with integrity to the original designer’s intent.
Andrew Bailes-Collins, co-chair of the GWG specifications committee and senior product manager for the PitStop product family at Enfocus, comments, “It is great to see Ricoh’s solutions passed Ghent Workgroup compliancy. This is a real benefit for their customers, taking away a lot of the guesswork and manual effort out-of-the-system configuration. Customers can be assured that ‘outof-the-box’ they are conforming to a known and proven standard.
“In addition as the senior product manager responsible for the PitStop product family at Enfocus, I am pleased to see Ricoh taking advantage of the GWG compliant preflight profiles, features and functionality offered by PitStop, which are integrated in TotalFlow Production Manager and TotalFlow Batch Builder.”
Didier Haazen, chair of the GWG compliance subcommittee and senior innovation advisor at VIGC, adds, “Ricoh has proven that preflight certification is important. Implementing OEM solutions helps Ricoh and the industry to quickly adopt the newest PDF standards and ensures predictability in the entire digital production chain.”
The GWG preflight certification is a validation of the prepress quality control specification developed by the GWG. It contains 14 different ‘variants’ aimed at different print market segments and output methods, all based on the ISO PDF/X-4 standard, but with additional conditions and restrictions relevant to each segment. The variants cover the majority of common print applications and include web- and sheetfed CMYK and/or spot color, plus magazine and newspaper advertisements. Because the certification is based on the PDF/X-4 standard, it also includes variants which allow the use of RGB colors within artwork files as well as ‘live’ transparency to support the most sophisticated and up-to-date graphic arts workflows.
The test suite used in the certification process comprises 260 test files that cover aspects such as correct detection of minimum image resolution, use of correct color spaces, white and black overprint settings, ink coverage, spot color usage and naming, and more. File content that does not meet the necessary conditions is either flagged with an error message or with a warning, depending on the importance of the issue and how it could affect output.
For more information on the GWG preflight certification procedure and test files, please visit: http://www.gwg.org/compliancytesting-procedure. Information on the GWG PDF/X workflow specification which underpins the preflight certification can be found here: http://www.gwg.org/gwg-2015- pdfx-workflow/
