Seshat does colour, PDF/X and pages, and has docs by task
Seshat now converts print files through real ICC print profiles, limits ink, sets black text in pure black, fixes white overprint, makes PDF/X-4 and PDF/X-1a, and reorders, merges, splits and marks pages. A new docs page goes by what you want to do with a file.
Seshat is Rekhu's print-file knower. This release brings the prepress work a print shop does every day into one API.
Colour that prints as expected
- Real print profiles: FOGRA39 (also with a 300 % ink limit), FOGRA51, FOGRA52 for uncoated paper, GRACoL 2013, SWOP 2013 and newspaper. The profile becomes the file's output intent, so the press knows what the colours are for.
- Too much ink: colours and CMYK pictures brought under the limit, black kept, so the tone stays.
- Black text in four colours: set in black only, so small type stays sharp. Large black areas keep their rich black.
- White that would disappear: white set to overprint is knocked out, and black text still overprints. The check now fixes this on its own.
- Spot colours spelt two ways: renamed into one, so the press sees one colour.
PDF/X
make_pdfx makes a file PDF/X-4, or PDF/X-1a with transparency flattened: converted through the profile, with its output intent, a trim box on every page and the identification the standard asks. When something stops a file, such as a font that cannot be embedded, the answer names it instead of pretending.
Pages
Pages reordered, removed, turned or added; crop and registration marks outside the bleed; files merged into one or split by page range; every page as a PNG or JPG picture for a shop, a mockup or an e-mail.
Docs by task
rekhu.com/docs/seshat starts from what you want to do: "Want to resize?", "Want PDF/X?", "Want another font?". Each answer says what to send, what comes back and the one call it takes, for Laravel and Node.js.
For developers
rekhu/core 0.6 for Laravel and @rekhu/core 0.6 for Node add merge(), split() and render(); every new fix goes through fix(). Code list 1.5.