PostScript Level 3 was introduced earlier last year and is in the processing of being incorporated into device drivers.
Some new features of PostScript Level 3 include
- Smooth shading - Smooth transitions from lighter to darker. Reduced banding. Both look better and print faster.
- Masked Images -Easier to print complex masks (clipping paths)
- In-RIP separations - More accurate higher quality color.
- Hi-Fi color - Supports separations with more than 4 colors, e.g. Pantone Hexachrome.
- Superscreens - Extra grays. Increases the number of gray levels printed on desktop printer.
- In-RIP trapping - More reliable trapping.
- Faster page processing - Prints faster and better.
- Direct support of PDF (Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format)
- Don’t have to open Acrobat viewer to print, can send direct to printer.
- Built in Web tools - Better equiped to work with network files.
Adobe Acrobat - A dialect of PostScript designed to extend device independence to full portability between platforms.
A file is encoded as a PDF (Portable Document Format) with the Acrobat Distiller and is interpreted by the Acrobat Reader. Principle differences between Acrobat and PostScript is
- Acrobat does not contain the full set of PostScript Operators.
- Acrobat can discard some high resolution data on a page to produce a more compact file.
- No device specific information is referenced in the file.
Acrobat 2.0 allows optional retention of PostScript information so that it can be regenerated. Acrobat 3.0 was introduced last year. Some new features are
- It is Web Ready. Acrobat 3.0 offers integrated viewing of PDF documents directly within World Wide Web browsers.
- Page-on-Demand. Access Page at a time downloading of PDF files across the Internet ensures fast display of PDF docu ments.
- Progressive Rendering of PDF pages means that text is rendered first (using a substitute font if necessary), followed by hypertext links and images. Then any embedded fonts are drawn on-screen last, ensuring quick viewing of the information.
- Optimize Files for the Internet. The Save As option of Acrobat 3.0 now includes a checkbox for optimizing
- PDF files for on-line delivery. Duplicate background objects (text, line art, and images) are combined, which can significantly reduce file size.
- Objects in a PDF file are re-ordered for page-on-demand access over the net.
- Batch Optimize.
- Users can easily optimize an entire folder—and, optionally, all included subfolders—of PDF files on a Web server or CD-ROM staging area.
- Cross-Document Links and the Internet PDF documents with relative cross-document links now work unchanged.
- This means users can create a single collection of hypertext-linked PDF files and publish them on local drives, network drives, CD-ROM, or a Web server—and the links automatically work in all locations.