Determining no of colour plates on a page

Is there any way to determine the no of plates (and which ones) that would be generated on output of (a single page) document to a separating RIP ?

Hi,

GetPageColorSpace is a first step on the way to solve your problem. I have the same interests (PDFs usable for plateproduction) too. GetPageColorSpace (and more) was suggested by me.

The last four values are CMYKs. -1 is for unknown value.

Defining a separationcolor in PDF it is possible to give an advice how for example pantone-colors should be replaced by CMYK. This is a good way to have them approximated on screen (CMYK-->RGB by renderer).

Problems:

1. Are all defined separationcolors really in use or only defined?
2. There is no need in PDF to define pur CMYK-colors as separationcolors.
3. In a PDF I did see definitions of separationcolors (in pur CMYK) with different names, but the same colorvalue. So I mis the possibility to unite them to one color, because I want them on one plate.
4. It should be possible too, to delete definitions of unused separationcolors.

The main-problem is to ask for all used colors.

I am working over a few years on a rather complex program which makes from a short definition of a product (pages, format, kind of binding, amount, content-PDF, machines, papers,...) a jobdefinition (XML+JDF) including PDFs for ripping. In the moment, my produced PDFs are only used as preview. But it shall change. In the future they will be used or ripping in production. So I have to struggle with colors.

My imagination is to have a function, which makes a list of colors, where for every color the following  properties are available:

name of color: string; // external Name for spotcolors, in other cases "RGB" or "CMYK"
name of colorspace: string; // empty or Gray, CMYK,...
IsSeparation,          // defined as
IsCMYK,
IsRGB,
IsLinecolor,           // used for
IsFillingcolor,
IsTextcolor: boolean;
smallestlinewidth: double; // very small lines may be unprintable
charcounter: integer;  // number of chars drawn with this color

So with IsRGB it would be clear, this PDF is not for professional printing. So we would get a half preflightcheck.

GetPageColorSpace is only a first step. It would interesting to know, how much users of QP would like this things.


Cheers,
Werner

I'd like a fonction like you described edvoigt