Dear all

I have a project to design labels and packaging with inkscape. I am not sure how to preflight the files.

1. I think I should send the printing house PDFX-3 Files.

In the past, I did everything in adobe and the printing house let me send Illustrator files to them. However, in my country (Thailand), I think people is not familiar with inkscape and I should send them PDFX-3 which is the standard format.

I found some issues and they said that I'd better import inkscape files to preflight in Scribus. Have anyone experience about this? Please guide me. And where can I find any instructions?

2. What does Alpha opacity and Opacity mean to printing process?

In Illustrator, spot-color works, lower percentage of color fill in color palette means that we lower size of ink spot on the paper. Lower transparency means thinner ink spot on the paper (an illustrator expertise told me this but I am not sure about this)

I would like to know how alpha opacity and opacity effect my printing output. And what should I do if I have to deal with two- color design (with two-plate in offset printing), transparency, and overlapping object?

Thanks for any kind of help

passwas, thank you for this post, I've been watching this thread in case anyone is able to answer your question, and unfortunately it doesn't look like it so far.

I'll be honest with you, you're working at a much higher level than most of us are used to when using Inkscape. Inkscape is so great to use - if this feature was in there I reckon it'd wipe the floor with just about everything else and even have Illustrator looking over its shoulder. I know there's a long-term aim to implement full CMYK colour management, but it's not a priority for the dev team right now so it's probably a year or more away. They work really hard in their own time on this project so we have to be patient; the day is coming, it's just not quite here yet.

In terms of solutions, I think what you suggest (import to Scribus) may be the best option for now. In the past when doing work for print I've drafted designs using Inkscape, which I find easy and powerful to use, then re-drawn using another package such as Illustrator or Serif DrawPlus in order to get print-ready PDFs. I dislike having to use them and somehow my end result is never quite as sharp and striking, but until there's a full implementation of colour spaces and pre-print colour management it'll have to do.

Hope this helps a bit.