Why Your Print Workflow May Be Stuck in the Past

Recently, while preparing for my CreativePro Week session, Why Your Print File Fails—and How to Fix It, I sat down with Mark Lewiecki, Senior Product Manager for the Adobe PDF Print Engine at Adobe, to discuss print production workflows, color management, and how modern technology is changing the way designers should prepare files for print.

With decades of experience spanning both traditional print production and Adobe’s PDF technologies, Mark offers a unique perspective on how the industry has evolved—and why many designers are still working with assumptions from a different era.

For those who may not know your role, can you tell us a little about what you do at Adobe and how your work intersects with print and production workflows?

I’m the Senior Product Manager for the Adobe PDF Print Engine, a position I’ve held since version 1.1 in 2006. It’s been twenty years since version 1.0, which is a pretty remarkable milestone.

The Adobe PDF Print Engine is Adobe’s native PDF rendering technology. As a product manager, I work closely with our customers—primarily large OEMs that integrate the technology into their prepress solutions. My role involves identifying market trends, understanding customer needs, and guiding the product’s development through new features and capabilities.

Last year, we announced version 7 of PDF Print Engine, which introduced several significant enhancements, including improvements to transparency blending and output workflows for modern printing devices.

I also come from a print production background. It has been a while, but I was working in the industry during the 1990s when print was making the major transition from analog to digital production. That was also the period when PDF emerged as the primary file exchange format for prepress.

My background includes packaging, retail advertising, flyers, and circulars, so I’ve had the opportunity to experience both the production side of the industry and the technology side that supports it today.

Many designers are still working with production assumptions that originated years ago. What are some of the biggest legacy habits you still see affecting modern workflows today?

One of the biggest things I still see is designers locking down files too early.

They flatten transparency. They convert everything to CMYK. They outline fonts.

Those practices were developed for specific reasons years ago, but in many cases they’re throwing away information that modern workflows can use.

The goal should be to keep graphics at the highest level of abstraction possible for as long as possible.

Why do you think those habits tend to persist long after the technology has evolved?

Because they solved real problems at one time.

There was a period when people didn’t completely trust output devices or rendering systems. Flattening transparency and simplifying files reduced risk.

The challenge is that those workflows became institutional knowledge. The original problems were solved, but the workflow habits remained.

Color management has become significantly more sophisticated over the years. What advances do you think designers often overlook?

Modern output profiles are far more capable than many people realize.

We also have presses today that can reproduce significantly larger gamuts than traditional CMYK devices. Expanded-gamut workflows allow printers to reproduce colors that were difficult or impossible to achieve in the past.

Many designers are still preparing files based on limitations that may not exist on the equipment being used today.

If a designer is still using workflows built around older profiles and standards, what are they potentially leaving on the table?

Flexibility.

If you convert colors too early, you may be preventing the prepress operator from applying the most appropriate output profile for the actual production condition.

If the final printing condition isn’t known, preserving the original color information often provides more options later in the workflow.

Once information is discarded, it’s difficult to get it back.

We still see many designers exporting PDF/X-1a because that’s what they were originally taught. How has the industry changed since then?

PDF/X-1a was developed to solve important workflow problems.

At the time, transparency support was limited and flattening was often necessary.

Today’s workflows are very different. Modern PDF workflows can preserve transparency, layers, and color information throughout production.

Rather than flattening and simplifying files early, modern workflows benefit from maintaining information as long as possible.

One thing we discussed was transparency. What’s your advice regarding flattening today?

Don’t flatten unless you have a reason to.

Modern PDF Print Engine workflows are designed to process live transparency accurately.

Flattening removes information and flexibility. If you don’t need to flatten, keeping transparency live generally gives the workflow more options.

Again, the goal is to maintain graphics at the highest level of abstraction possible for as long as possible.

When Adobe evaluates creative workflows, what signals tell you that it’s time for a process or technology to evolve?

We look at customer needs, new hardware capabilities, and opportunities created by emerging technologies.

Whether it’s GPU acceleration, HDR displays, automation, or AI-assisted workflows, we continually evaluate how those technologies can improve the creative and production process.

What trends are you seeing among printers, publishers, and creative teams that would have surprised us ten years ago?

That digital print volumes will eclipse offset volumes sooner than projected.

The volume of digital output continues to increase. Run lengths are becoming shorter. Personalization is becoming more common.

At the same time, automation is becoming increasingly important because production environments are handling more jobs than ever before.

Thinking about the future, what aspects of production and color-managed workflows do you think will be dramatically different from today?

One area is the communication of manufacturing intent.

Today we communicate what something should look like. In the future, workflows will likely need to communicate more information about how something should be manufactured.

That includes finishing requirements, binding instructions, embellishments, and other production specifications.

The more automation we introduce into production workflows, the more important that information becomes.

Are there any long-standing workflow assumptions you think designers will eventually leave behind?

I think we’ll continue moving away from workflows that unnecessarily discard information.

Whether it’s flattening transparency, converting colors too early, or outlining fonts before necessary, those actions remove flexibility from the workflow.

Modern production systems are becoming more capable, not less capable.

I’ve often said that most print failures aren’t creative failures—they’re workflow failures. Do you agree?

Absolutely.

Most of the problems occur somewhere between creative intent and production execution.

The more effectively designers and printers communicate, the more likely they are to achieve the desired result.

If you could give designers one piece of advice to future-proof their workflows today, what would it be?

Talk to your printer.

Understand the capabilities of the equipment that’s actually producing the work.

Many assumptions designers make are based on technologies from years ago. Printers often have capabilities today that weren’t available when those assumptions were created.

The better you understand the production environment, the better decisions you can make upstream.

Final Thoughts

One theme emerged repeatedly throughout our conversation: preserve information.

Many of the workflow habits that designers were taught years ago were developed to overcome limitations in older technology. Today’s workflows are often more successful when we preserve information rather than remove it.

• Don’t flatten transparency unless necessary.
• Don’t convert colors before you know the printing condition.
• Don’t lock down files prematurely.
• And most importantly, maintain an open dialogue with your printer.

As Mark put it, the goal is to keep graphics at the highest level of abstraction possible for as long as possible.

That’s not just good advice for today’s workflows—it’s likely the foundation for the future of print production as well.