Page 11 - PWM2025_NOVEMBER EBOOK

PROFILE

Adobe changes its spots: APPE V7

developments

A (APPE7) back in the summer and it proudly pointed out that
dobe announced its latest version 7 of its PDF Print Engine

it had fixed some problems with PDF that most people
hadn’t realised were there. After all, it’s not really in the
front-end manufacturers’ interests to say that some bits are
broken, until after they’ve fixed them.
Nessan Cleary clearly explained the main new features of APPE7 in
Printweek June-July. Broadly speaking, it supports current computer
processing abilities, as well as new workflows and technologies in
design and print. It’s also gaining some features relevant to the grow-
ing use of extended colour gamut process sets, special effects and
embellishment processes.
In this article by Simon Eccles, he is zeroing in on its improved han-
dling of extended colour gamut (ECG) and spot colour printing, which
is used either to improve the colour range of photographs, or to
broaden the number of ‘spot’ colours (especially Pantone references)
that can be handled with standardised process colour inks and toners
in sets of five, six or seven (usually adding orange, green and/or violet).
These more-than CMYK sets are called ‘N-colour’ or even ‘nColor’ in
PDF jargon, and they have been supported in PDF since v.1.6 in 2004.
Five-, six- and seven-colour process sets are increasingly important Adobe announced its latest version 7 of its PDF Print Engine (APPE7) in summer
in two main areas. In flexible or carton packaging that often have mul- “We have supported output to multicolour channels since APPE version
tiple ‘special’ non-CMYK colours, having to wash up and change spe-
cial inks between jobs is expensive and slows down changeovers. 1 and we have supported transparency blending. However, if there are
There’s an advantage in printing a standardised six- or seven-colour transparent elements on a page prior to APPE7, the entire page needed to
process set that can hit nearly all Pantone values without changing get blended and the colour space used for that blending has been CMYK,
inks between jobs. which immediately constricts the gamut for everything on that page,
There’s a different issue for digital presses, where even if they offer whether it’s a transparent element or not.”
fifth and sixth units, you can’t usually order special mixes. This can even be a single drop shadow or transparent tint that doesn’t
Manufacturers offer standardised extra colours like orange, green, vio- use the non-CMYK colours, he says. “We still separate to the seven col-
let/blue, as well as whites, clears and metallics. The honourable excep- ours, but the orange, green and violet channels will be empty. They’ll be
tion is HP Indigo, which makes up to seven-unit presses and does offer
a DIY ink-mixing facility just like litho, as well as a standardised ECG zero.” It’s a PDF issue that all RIP makers face, he says. This is what the
process set called IndiChrome. new version fixes: “In v.7 we are blending in the same output space as the
Spot colours and specials have to be set up at the design stage and as the device. So if the device has a colour profile for six colours or seven
handled through pre-press to the RIP-renderer. This is where APPE7’s colours, we will blend and separate all in the same colour space. You can
fix comes in. The Adobe launch blurb says: “APPE7 uses the full press take full advantage of the available gamut on that press for everything on
gamut – even for complex transparent elements like drop shadows, that page. That’s new and it’s an industry first.”
soft edges, stacked graphics and images, and smooth gradients. All the same, PDF was invented by Adobe in 1993. Transparency for
Transparent regions in an artwork are flattened in the same blend CMYK was added with PDF 1.4 in 2001, and N-colour with v.1.6 in 2004
space as the output colour profile as the press, resulting in more accu- (this led to PDF/X-4, the current recommended print standard). It’s taken
rate, vivid and impactful prints for graphically complex jobs.” a long time to fix. After PDF 1.7 Adobe handed PDF over to the ISO in
Mark Lewiecki is the senior product manager at Adobe who has 2008. Development slowed right down, but the committee finally issued
been involved in the APPE project since the start – the first version a major update called PDF 2.0 (ISO 32000-2:2017) in 2017 with a tweak
was launched at Ipex in 2006. We quizzed him about this improved
support for wide-gamut colour printing and embellishment. Lewiecki (ISO 32000-2:2020) at the end of 2020. This includes some revisions to
explains that APPE7 fixes a long-standing deficiency of PDF in-RIP N-colour handling.
processing: “The problem is that the PDF specification defines how to However, it has not been widely implemented – even where a system
blend transparency in 16 different modes, for CMYK, RGB and grey. tags a file as PDF 2.0 it may not use all the new features. Most industry
But there is no definition on how to do it in N-colour, let’s say CMYK users stick to PDF 1.6/1.7 and PDF/X-4 because not much offers 2.0 any-
plus orange, green and/or violet. way.

www.printweekmena.com November 2025 PrintWeek MENA 09