Put to the test

The new Packaging Specifications from the Ghent PDF Workgroup have been tested by leading organizations in Europe and North America. Using real production files in “real world environments”, French company Square and Kraft Foods collaborated to achieve a set of best practice specifications designed to help ensure more reliable and consistent PDF file exchange for all the stakeholders involved in packaging.

The GWG Packaging Subcommittee - representing more than 30 European and US companies, associations, brand owners, vendors, consultants, and educational institutions - worked together and evaluated the best practice implementation of end-to-end PDF workflows in the packaging industry around the world. The committee worked on the definition of 'best practices' to include settings, rules, guidelines, workflows and a framework to define PDF as the ultimate exchangeable file format for the packaging industry. The guidelines and settings are 'generic' for the packaging industry and suitable for the entire process from design to output, and covering all printing processes.

In Europe, Lyon based Square, a graphic production company specializing in publishing, packaging, brand design, digital asset management and cross media, worked with the GWG to develop and test the new specifications.

Square ceo Roland Donzelle reports: "For us, the main advantage of the packaging specifications is that we can rely on a safe standard. As for our clients, they can count on improved exchange of graphic files. In addition, they benefit from a very high level of security through traceability, as well as improved time to market. Now that the GWG Packaging Subcommittee has released its specifications, the entire industry should benefit from them. The production side of the packaging industry was lacking in workflow standards, in contrast to its administrative and operational side in which economic and regulatory issues are very important and have been addressed. Any solution that leads to faster file exchanges while making them more reliable is a significant breakthrough," he affirms.

In the US, Kraft worked with Southern Graphic Systems on the specification for PDF file exchange between designers and brand owners. Gary Vogt, Kraft's associate director for prepress and print technology, says his company tends to use and receive highly complex files, so he felt it would be advantageous, for the GWG testing process, to use files from eight of the company's design partners, and processed for output by partner Southern Graphic Systems.

He says PDF files will become more integral to packaging workflows as they improve and validate the file hand-offs through the supply chain, and the Packaging Specifications, accordingly, will bring substantial benefit to the industry. "The GWG is delivering on PDF’s promise of truly portable, reliable, file exchange, even for the most complex applications," he affirms.

In a joint statement, GWG Packaging Subcommittee co-chairpersons Steve Carter, (Southern Graphic Systems) and Christian Blaise (Enfocus Software) comment: "Consumer product companies are very frustrated by the supply chain. Designers believe that they have prepared production-ready files, but the prepress companies complain that the designers don't know how to build a file. Then printers complain that the prepress houses don't know how to construct plate-ready imposed files. The consumer companies say: 'Just work out the details.' The way to do this is to agree on a common file format with agreed-upon specifications."

All GWG specifications, with the temporary exception of the Packaging Specifications, are based on and compliant with the ISO PDF/X standards. As PDF/X-Plus specifications, GWG has added extra restrictions and rules targeting a specific workflow on top of the requirement to be PDF/X compliant.

In packaging, features such as support for live transparency in PDF files and support for multiple layers are important and necessary. In the versions of PDF/X supported by the Workgroup (PDF/X-1a:2001 and PDF/X-3:2002) those features are not allowed. So the first set of packaging specification is not PDF/X compliant. However, in mid 2007 the ISO is to release PDF/X-4, where transparency and layers will be allowed. The GWG will use this new ISO standard in the next version of its packaging specifications.

Christian Blaise concludes: "The packaging subcommittee has worked extremely hard to develop specifications to meet the very specific needs of this segment, which involves numerous players. It was felt that there was a need for the process standardization and we have worked for almost two years, using real production files. The new specifications optimize the working process and maximize control. The reduction in time to market reflects positively on the packaging industry."

The new specifications are downloadable for free from the GWG website.