🚀 go-pugleaf

As long as you're going to go to the trouble of creating a PDF file...

For many years, going the PDF route -- taking advantage of the fact that Distiller is at heart a software RIP -- was considered the "poor man's" proofing solution. (Perhaps not-so-poor anymore -- Acrobat 6, especially the "pro" version, is not inexpensive.) The problem was that at print time Acrobat 5 and earlier gave you no control over printer color management (with the ability to dial in RGB printer profiles as one can in Photoshop and the newest Illustrators).

Aha! Acrobat 6 (the pro version at least -- don't know about the others) finally does give you that capability. Print time color management capabilities in Acrobat 6 are in fact the most extensive I've seen yet.

It seems to me that if one chooses the correct color settings -- both when distilling to PDF and when printing from Acrobat 6 -- one should be able to achieve reasonably accurate prepress proofs using your ink jet printer's native (RGB) driver because the entire process can be profile driven.

I've yet to try this myself, but I will do so when I get the chance, comparing the results to PressReady. If someone else has already tried this, I'd really like to hear about it.

=-= Harron =-=