Adobe PDF Print Engine features

Color: Incorporate the latest color imaging science into your product.

Live transparency blending

Transparency effects are part of PDF and essential to modern graphic design. PDF Print Engine blends transparent objects to produce attention-getting print effects such as drop shadows, soft edges, and backgrounds. Even when combined with spot colors and smooth shades, transparency is rendered seamlessly for maximum impact.

ICC-based color management

PDF Print Engine includes the Adobe Color Engine and can also be integrated with proprietary CMMs (Color Management Modules). Job elements profiled with any combination of color spaces are efficiently combined and converted to the intended print condition, per the output profile.

PDF 2.0 color capabilities

New color capabilities introduced with PDF 2.0 are fully supported—black point compensation (BPC), spectral data for spot colors (CxF), and page-level output intent.

Smoother shades

It can be challenging to avoid banding and artifacts when rendering long gradient blends, both axial and radial. With PDF Print Engine, continuous shades are always rendered more smoothly.

16-bit processing

PDF Print Engine processes color planes for images and graphics containing any bit-depth, up to 16 bits per channel, to faithfully render subtle color shifts and achieve absolute color precision.

Peak performance: Maximize the efficiency of available hardware resources.

Built for maximum speed

With a performance-first foundation, PDF Print Engine is the fastest rendering technology for rich graphics and variable data printing (VDP). Rendering algorithms are continually optimized to ensure the fastest output times for complex effects created by the latest features in Adobe Creative Cloud applications.

PDF/VT for VDP

PDF Print Engine provides several options to cache the repeating elements in VDP jobs run on digital presses. Adobe initiated the PDF/VT standard to bring the benefits of the PDF workflow to VDP printing. Opaque and transparent elements are cached and retrieved in real time. For even faster performance, PDF Print Engine can be configured to cache either rasters or display list objects for each element.

Mercury RIP Architecture

VDP jobs can be output to the fastest presses in the industry with the Mercury RIP Architecture—a scalable, dynamic platform that maximizes parallel processing on multiple, dedicated CPUs.

Tile Parallel Processing

A large surface can be subdivided into tiles, each of which can be rendered by a separate instance of PDF Print Engine. Rasterized tiles are seamlessly reassembled, resulting in even faster performance for large surfaces.

64-bit processing

PDF Print Engine supports only modern 64-bit processor architectures.

Print quality: Bring the designer’s vision to life.

Anti-aliasing

PDF Print Engine can visually smoothen the sharp edges in text and graphics, which is especially helpful at low resolutions.

Halftone origin

Identical units in a step-and-repeat job can be anchored and aligned to the pixel grid to ensure consistent screening and an identical halftone appearance for each element.

Inline image processing

PDF Print Engine can be configured for run-time modification of images using any predefined algorithm and metadata inputs.

Non-binary halftones

PDF Print Engine can produce accurate 2-bit, 3-bit, and 4-bit continuous tone output for non-binary halftone screening.

Object-level transformation

PDF Print Engine can apply transforms to all elements in a job, or to elements of the same type (such as images). Additionally, individual objects can be discreetly targeted for transformation.

Optimized compression

PDF Print Engine can distinguish between images, vectors, and unmarked areas down to the pixel level, so the most efficient type of compression can be used for each type of content.

System integration: Streamline product development and testing.

JDF-based automation

PDF Print Engine integrates with workflows managed by Job Definition Format (JDF), the industry standard maintained by CIP4.

PDF Helper

PDF Print Engine includes the PDF Helper utility for dynamic job configuration based on run-time inspection of incoming files (read-only).

Tight integration with PDF Library

For systems that include the Adobe PDF Library, PDF Print Engine can invoke it at run time to enable real-time modification of job content immediately prior to rendering.

Enhanced Unicode support

Control parameters, file paths, and passwords can include multibyte characters.

PDF Driver support

PDF Print Engine can accept print streams submitted directly from desktop applications via Adobe PDF Driver. It can also accept PostScript via Adobe PDF Converter.

Cutting-edge capabilities to power your Adobe PDF Print Engine experience