[pdftex] Embedding and CMYK

[William Adams]

John asked:
>Most printers want 4 color work to be cmyk. Unfortunately products such as
>Gimp produce RGB output. Is there a way via pdftex/pdfetex to ensure that
>everything in the file is expressed in cmyk terms?

The industry-standard way to do this sort of thing is to ``pre-flight''
the .pdf using Enfocus' PitStop (a plug-in for the full version of Adobe
Acrobat). Really competent/up-to-date printers will provide a profile
(and be-like an Acrobat Distiller .joboptions setting) so that you can
check files for compatibility before sending.

Failing that, you're placing the files from a given directory, right?
Should be able to script a way to check / convert all files in it before
placing them---kind of late / painful to find out something's RGB after
it's already placed in a document.

IME, it's actually worth making PostScript out of .pdf, then
re-distilling and then pre-flighting. Fixes a multitude of minor
incompatibilities / issues (e.g. placed graphics being ``form'' objects
which are inaccessible for editing / checking).

William