These settings allow you to specify how the Normalize Task Processor processes all incoming data, and customize the way in which the Normalize Task Processor produces PDF files in the selected flow. The Normalizer settings are grouped into five tabs.

You can access these settings:

The name of the Parameter Set as it will appear in the Production Plan. When you create a Parameter Set, you should specify a Parameter Set name. You can always change this name later by editing the job, choosing the Parameter Set from the Task Processor in the Plan tab, and unlocking the settings in the Settings pane.

To replace the Flexrip-plate workflow, choose one of the following workflows:

Select this check box to show warnings generated by the PDF conversion.

Select this check box to show fix messages generated by the PDF conversion.

You can select this check box to specify the target device for printing the GRS document

You can choose between Acrobat 4.0 (PDF 1.3), Acrobat 5.0 (PDF 1.4), Acrobat 6.0 (PDF 1.5), Acrobat 7.0 (PDF 1.6), and Acrobat 8.0 (PDF 1.7). Acrobat 4.0 is selected by default.

The binding option affects how the pages are arranged side by side so that it will match the reading direction (left to right or right to left) of text in the document. You can choose either Left or Right. Right Edge binding is useful for viewing Arabic or Hebrew text or vertical Japanese text. By default, the binding is set to Left Edge.

Enter the resolution at which you want to generate PDF files. The default setting is 1200 dpi, which is suitable for most jobs.

Select this check box if you want to use the resolution of the output device. In this case, the Resolution field is disabled.

Specify the width and height that the Normalize Task Processor should use by default when no page size is specified in the incoming job. These values are used only when the document has no page size setting, or when the page size exceeds the allowed size.

This is the amount that an image or color extends to the trimmed edge of the printed page.

Select this check box to search the incoming document for a specific page size.

Specify the default page size (width and height) if no Bounding Box information can be extracted from the document.

If you want to generate smaller PDF file sizes, you can set the Normalize Task Processor to downsample any images it encounters.

A separate check box is provided for Monochrome images, Grayscale images, and Color images. To enable downsampling for a particular image type, select the corresponding Downsampling check box, and choose one of the downsampling methods from the list:

This is the fastest downsampling method.

This is the intermediate downsampling method that produces good results.

This is the slowest downsampling method, which produces the best quality.

For each of the selected downsampling methods, enter your required target image resolution (dpi) in the ‘to’ box provided.

For each of the three image types, you can also specify image downsampling thresholds. By default, these values are set 150% of your selected target image resolution. For example, if you set your compression options to downsample color images to 300 dpi, then by default this downsampling will be applied to all color images that are 450 dpi or higher.

In the ‘above’ box, you can change this default for images above the dpi threshold to any value you require.

The goal of image compression is to reduce the size of the PDF in order to improve performance.

To enable image compression for a particular image type, select the corresponding check box, and choose one of the image quality options from the list.

These are lossless compression methods which are good for most monochrome images.

This is also a lossless compression method.

These options compress images with a minimum amount of information (quality) loss. JPEG compression produces smaller files than ZIP compression.

This is also a lossless compression method for images with large areas of solid black or white.

These options activate automatic image compression. The greater the compression the smaller the resulting file size. The image compression uses the best compression algorithm according to the specific image type. Although some of the original image quality is lost, even the lower image quality options will produce reasonable image quality.

Select the 'Compress text and line art' check box if you also want to compress the rest of the data in your input documents.

The Application Settings only affect incoming PostScript. These settings are typically used with documents from high-end documentation and graphics applications, such as Adobe Illustrator and Adobe PageMaker. For more information, see the documentation that came with the application.

Retains UCR (Under Color Removal) and Black Generation settings if they exist in the PostScript file. Black Generation calculates the amount of black to be used when trying to reproduce a particular color. Under Color Removal (UCR) reduces the amount of cyan, magenta, and yellow components to compensate for the amount of black that was added by the black generation. Because it uses less ink, UCR is generally used for newsprint and uncoated stock.

Retains any halftone information in files.

For more in-depth information, see “Understanding Normalize Settings”.

The following options are only applicable for composite PostScript. For pre-separated PostScript, the value is always ‘Apply’:

See also PostScript Color Management in “PDF Render - Render Settings”.

Select this option if you want to use the Color Management settings of your application. This option disables the Color Management settings.

In this section you can overwrite application profiles, CIE based color spaces and render intents.

Select this option if you want to use the Overprint Settings of your application. This option disables the Force Knockout and Force Overprint settings.

Select this option if you want to overwrite the Overprint Settings of your application. This option enables the Force Knockout and Force Overwrite settings.

Select this check box if you want the application to process the files with PSE disabled.

Select this option if you want to create PDF files in ASCII text format. This is useful if you want to send a file via email, although it increases file size.

You can configure the Normalize Task Processor to produce PDFs, even if documents are input with missing fonts, and the font is not available as an Apogee font resource. The Normalizer will then substitute any missing fonts with the substitution font that you specify.

There are a number of ways you can deal with missing fonts:

Select this check box to embed only a subset of the fonts, and specify a threshold percentage. If the threshold is 90, for example, and less than 90% of the characters are used, the Normalize Task Processor embeds only those characters. By default, this option is disabled.

This option allows you to change the name extension (such as CVC or CVU) according to the medium type:

This option allows you to convert the old Pantone name extensions to the Pantone 2000 extensions.

Apogee will interpret any color name beginning with a “P” as a Pantone color name.

Page Thumbnails are low-resolution images that Apogee uses to show thumbnails of a page in the Results tab. These thumbnails are not those that are embedded in the PDF file (and that you can see in a PDF viewer such as Acrobat): They are TIFF images that are stored inside Apogee. You should use the Export Task Processor to produce PDF files with embedded thumbnails.

The Normalizer uses the document's thumbnails as page thumbnails if they are present. It builds thumbnails for those pages that have no thumbnail. Note that the page thumbnails may not be built if there are problems generating a proper PDF file (from a PostScript file). This is the default setting.

The Normalizer uses the document's thumbnails as page thumbnails. Documents that have no thumbnails will have no page thumbnails, and are displayed with a generic icon in the Results tab. You should select this option if you want maximum performance and do not require thumbnails in the Results tab. This is also useful for fast processing of large documents, where page thumbnails are not important (e.g. a text-only book). For optimal performance, you can also enable the HotFolder's thumbnail extraction.

The Normalizer always builds page thumbnails for every file it successfully delivers, even if the incoming file already contains thumbnails. The thumbnails may not be generated if there are problems generating a proper PDF file (from a PostScript file). Since this will slow down the Normalizer, you should use this option only if you know that the embedded thumbnails of the received PDF files are of bad quality.

For more in-depth information, see “Understanding Normalize Settings”.