Solutions: Macy's West ads arrive via PDF

MacWeek, March 2, 1998 by Erik Sherman

Much of the talk about Adobe Systems Inc.'s Portable Document Format involves

its role in distributing electronic documents, as well as its potential in the

prepress industry - once issues of color support, edge enhancement and

resolution are resolved. Even with rough edges, however, PDF is already

proving to be a gem to some users. Just ask Macy's West, the West Coast

division of R.H. Macy's Inc.

As a chain of department stores, San Francisco-based Macy's West finds it

necessary to advertise in newspapers - lots of them. In fact, it runs weekly

ads in 52 newspapers. That once meant creating camera-ready art for each

newspaper and making paper copies for all of its stores so they would know

which specials were running. It also meant lots of redundant work to create

different versions of each ad.

Macy's West used to handle ad production through a combination of internal

staff and service vendors. Eventually the company decided to bring all

production in-house - including photography, design, paste-up, prepress and

proofing. This offers better control and provides for faster reaction time to

changes in the market or merchandising shifts.

"We felt that since we controlled the whole process, why not use a single file

format for all the mediums that we use," said Jaake Jacobson, director of

advertising technical services. The company was using many different digital

formats but wanted unified work flows that would save money and help eliminate

duplication of work. It also wanted a means to send digital files rather than

film or paper output, thereby improving reproduction quality by removing

production steps that can degrade fidelity - and saving money in shipping,

supplies and other expenses.

Road to PDF

In June 1994 Macy's West was sending PostScript files to a printer and started

using Adobe Acrobat PDF files for soft proofing. "Acrobat was handy. It was

accurate," said Ward Parsons, a Macy's West digital prepress technology

analyst.

At the same time, the company was also examining TIFF/IT as a potential

digital format. While some of its printing vendors supported TIFF/IT, Parsons

held out for PDF.

One reason was that TIFF/IT was essentially a proprietary format supported by

vendors. The last thing Macy's West wanted was to be tied to particular

hardware or software. In addition, TIFF/IT would require a separate box to

perform the file translations, resulting in a fractured work flow and limiting

the gains that a single file format would create.

Although newspapers and other printers could handle PostScript, the

high-resolution files were enormous, costing too much in money and time to

send. Also, the newspapers were anxious to deal with smaller files. "They

said, 'Sure, we'd rather get a 400K [PDF] file than a 6-Mbyte PostScript

file,' " Jacobson said.

There were other rewards for Macy's West. "When you go direct to plate you

have a longer tonal range, better registration, less make-ready," Parsons

said. If Macy's West wanted an ad changed, it was easy for the newspapers to

modify the PDF files rather than waiting for Macy's West to alter the original

QuarkXPress files and send a new version. Anything that improved the ads was a

pay-back on Macy's West investment, including the shortened production time.

At about the same time that summer, Macy's West started using AdSend, a

service of The Associated Press. The news cooperative, owned by member

organizations, had extensive electronic contact with most newspapers in the

United States and had branched out to allow advertisers to send electronic

files to the papers. Not wanting to pass up the opportunity, Macy's West began

working with its newspaper vendors to see how they could all use PDF files.

The interest of a large advertiser had much to do with it, but there were

advantages for the newspapers, too. Working through AdSend, there was the

possibility of PDF files flowing directly into pagination, which would greatly

facilitate newspaper production. And the chain of stores made concessions that

reduced concerns for the newspapers, especially in color accuracy.

Although one of the shortcomings of PDF was its lack of good color control,

Macy's West found a way around this by printing a gray-scale bar in each ad.

But it's not an ordinary gray scale. Rather than screened black ink, it is a

three-ink bar created with magenta, yellow and cyan, the fundamental colors of

a printing press. If the color densities in the bar are correct, the color

should theoretically be balanced, so Macy's West agreed not to dispute ads

over color balance as long as the gray scale was on the money, reducing a

concern that printers have when printing in full color.

"We gave up that one-eighth inch for the gray bar and we had to get our

creatives and management to buy off on it, saying this will improve quality,"

Parsons said. While placing the bar outside the ad boundary would be

preferable, not all the newspapers could support it.

Making the connection

Due to the open PDF format, Macy's West has been able to work with its current

hardware mix. That mix includes 150 Macs used to create content; Windows NT