designed for tablets test suite and best practices · 2016-05-02 · - adobe indesign cs6 and cc -...

Designed for Tablets Test Suite and Best Practices White Paper

Designed for Tablets Test Suite and Best Practices

Authors Christian Blaise, Bart Van Looy Co-chairs Cross-Media SubCommittee, GWG Jason Lisi Documentation Officer, GWG

Date 18 June 2015

Status Final

[email protected] www.gwg.org


Table of Contents 1 Introduction ................................................................................................... 3 1.1 About the Ghent Workgroup .......................................................................... 3 1.2 About This Document .................................................................................... 4 1.3 More Information ......................................................................................... 4 2 An Overview of the DFT Test Suite .................................................................... 5 2.1 Scope of the Designed for Tablets (DFT) project ............................................... 5 2.2 Chronology of the Work Done By the Ghent Workgroup ..................................... 5 2.3 Description of the Suite ................................................................................. 6 2.4 Summary Spreadsheet of the Test Results ...................................................... 11 2.5 Results Discussion ....................................................................................... 11 3 Conclusion and Further Information ................................................................. 13 3.1 Recommendations ....................................................................................... 13 3.2 Conclusion ................................................................................................. 13 3.3 Further Information ..................................................................................... 13


1 Introduction 1.1 About the Ghent Workgroup

The Ghent Workgroup (GWG) is a worldwide assembly of graphic arts stakeholders (user associations, vendors, consultants, educational institutions, service providers, and end users) founded in 2001. It was formed in response to increased needs for standardization of the different processes in graphic arts workflows, especially in an increasingly globalized service provider landscape. The rules of the group have been carefully conceived to ensure that the group remains practically oriented, and the priority is focused on the needs of the end users. The GWG focuses on developing best practice guidelines and specifications for graphic arts workflows. While initially focusing mainly on quality control and preflight for PDF workflows in commercial print, that focus has broadened to also include metadata specifications, workflow test suites and increased support for market segments such as packaging. All material created by the GWG is disseminated free of charge through the website of the GWG (www.gwg.org) and through the vendors and user associations partaking in the work of the group. The mission statement of the Ghent Workgroup states that the group will “establish and disseminate process specifications for best practices in graphic arts workflows”. In practice this means that the group:

• Develops and maintains process specifications and associated documentation for best practices in graphic arts workflows.

• Develops and maintains reference implementations to ensure the specifications it develops are usable in the real world.

• Actively promotes adoption of its work in both the graphic arts user and vendor communities.

• Streamlines and coordinates the decision process between its members. • • While the group started its work developing guidelines for PDF quality control, it has expanded its scope. The group is now involved in magazine, office, and packaging specific specifications, the development of job ticket metadata specifications for delivering PDF files for advertisements, preflighting PDF files, and in developing test suites to ensure workflows and applications are configured and used correctly. • Much of the work of the group is done through teleconferences and e-mail discussions. Three times a year, the members come together for a three-day face-to-face meeting. To streamline the work and decision process, subcommittees have been organized around specific topics do the actual work. To learn more about the different subcommittees, or to find out how you can contribute to this effort, visit the Ghent Workgroup website (www.gwg.org).


1.2 About This Document The purpose of this white paper is to provide an overview of the work done by the GWG Cross Media Subcommitte on the testing of Digital Publishing Solutions using a specially designed Cross Media Test Suite developed by the group. This document describes the Cross Media Test Suite and its application, as well as discusses the results of the testing performed on Cross Media Solutions. This paper also discusses best practices for publishing authoring documents on a tablet.

1.3 More Information The GWG website contains a lot of useful information regarding the GWG, its specifications and deliverables, and caters to vendors, associations and end-users alike. It also features a user forum where you can interact with your peers and ask questions.


2 An Overview of the DFT Test Suite 2.1 Scope of the Designed for Tablets (DFT) project

The scope of the Designed for Tablets (DFT) project was to evaluate the current Digital Publishing Solutions of the market to define standards (if possible) and best practices for tablet publishing out of the authoring applications. As this project was preliminary in its scope, it was decided to limit the initial testing to iPad optimized published content generated from the authoring application Adobe InDesign. Vendor solutions were tested in terms of their digital publishing workflow as well as their corresponding viewing app on the iPad. It should be noted that for this study, the content tested did not contain any type of interaction or animation. Testing environment:

- Adobe InDesign CS6 and CC - iOS 7.x and 8.x

Vendors/solutions tested are:

- Adobe Digital Publishing Suite (both PDF and PNG) Release 30, 31 - TwixlMedia Publisher 4.0 - Aquafadas 3.5, 3.6 - AppStudio (PDF and HTML5) v2.3.0

2.2 Chronology of the Work Done By the Ghent Workgroup The project started in January 2014, and built upon previous work done by Christian Blaise for Square on evaluating Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. The GWG found this preliminary work very promising and wanted to extend the research to other platform. Square gave the GWG permission to reuse the work that had been done as a starting basis to build a complete test suite for evaluation of other solutions in the market. The GWG Cross Media Subcommittee developed the Designed for Tablets (DFT) Test Suite, which was presented for validation to the GWG in May 2014. Digital Publishing Solutions were tested between summer 2014 and January 2015, with some of these solutions being tested multiple times as new versions of these solutions were released that fixed problems over time. The final DFT Test Summary was distributed internally to GWG members in February 2015.


2.3 Description of the Suite What follows is a sampling of some of the test patches of the DFT Test Suite, their purpose and its desired outcome.

2.3.1 GWG 1.0 – Text size – Sans Serif The purpose of this patch is to display sans-serif text in different typefaces, sizes and weights in order to evaluate the visual result of the text.

Depending on the device type and resolution (iPad, iPad mini, Retina display, non-Retina), the workflow used by each solution, and the file format on output (PDF or image), the sharpness/smoothness of the text may be different which in turn can affect legibility.

2.3.2 GWG 1.1 – Text size –Serif The purpose of this patch is to display serif text in different typefaces, sizes and weights in order to evaluate the visual result of the text.

Depending on the device type and resolution (iPad, iPad mini, Retina display, non-Retina), the workflow used by each solution, and the file format on output (PDF or image), the sharpness/smoothness of the text may be different which in turn can affect legibility, especially given the fineness of of some serifs.


2.3.3 GWG 2.0 – Image Resolution Depending on the device type and resolution (iPad, iPad mini, Retina display, non-Retina), the workflow used by each solution and the file format on output (PDF or image), the output resolution requirements of images can vary, and therefore the visual quality of the images on screen can also vary.

The purpose of this patch is to determine an ideal image resolution by displaying the same image at different resolutions to assess the lowest image resolution required to achieve good visual results through a quality to resolution ratio. Image resolutions used in the patch are 36, 72, 108, 144 and 288 dpi.

2.3.4 GWG 3.0 – Image Profile Image Profile patch is designed to idenitify if the color profiles assigned to an image are correctly honored. The first two images contain an embedded icc profile, the third one does not. The first image has an sRGB profile embedded. Since the device renders objects in sRGB, the first image with the sRGB embedded profile should not be converted.

The second image has a ProPhoto embedded profile, and should be converted to sRGB generating visual result that closely resembles the first image. The third image has been rendered using a ProPhoto profile but the profile has not been embedded. This should cause the tablet to assume the image is sRGB, resulting in a visual result that is different than the other two images.


2.3.5 GWG 4.0 – Swatches_CMYK This patch displays different color patches designed in CMYK in InDesign. Some patches are solid colors, while others contain tint percentages, opacity variations, or a combination of tint and opacity variations.

Each vector patch is paired with its rasterized equivalent. The purpose of this patch is to show the potential difference between vector and raster rendering. This is important to understand when designing a page, as it may have some elements in the final file using both vector and raster data for the same ‘object’ when using interactivity on the device. In these cases there should be no

difference in terms of visual appearance in that case to achieve the best result.

2.3.6 GWG 4.1 – Swatches_RGB This patch displays different color patches designed in RGB in InDesign. Some patches are solid colors, while others contain tint percentages, opacity variations, or a combination of tint and opacity variations.

The purpose and importance of this patch is the same as that of the Swatches_CMYK patch.


2.3.7 GWG 5.0 – Spot Color Conversions There are may ways of making color conversion of spot colors in terms of imported content to the final design in InDesign. This patch displays a spot color that has been converted using different source applications and versions, which can result in the color looking visually different depending on how it was converted.

To ensure a consistent conversion between sources, it is advised to not convert anything before importing to InDesign and let InDesign make the conversion.

2.3.8 GWG 5.1 – Spot Color Alternate Colorspaces Depending on the workflow used by each cross media solution and the file format on output (PDF or image), alternate spot colors are managed quite differently.

This patch contains a specific yellow spot color on top and three other patches where the alternate color has been modified (one in Lab, one RGB and one CMYK). The expected result is that all patches are displayed in yellow, as shown in the main image on the left. If the alternate are not correctly rendered (e.g. image workflow not honouring overprint), the result will look like the image below.


2.3.9 GWG 6.0 – HTML5 This patch has been designed to display the same content in both vector and HTML to identify rendering differences that may occur when interactivity on the page requires areas to be rendered using sRGB (HTML content)..

The expected result is that there is no difference between the two methods. This is important, as there may be interactivity on top of a vector-based content, both using the same color, and the visual appearance of the final page should be the same. To achieve this result, the vector content should be designed in sRGB (see patches 4.0 & 4.1).


2.4 Summary Spreadsheet of the Test Results Patch Nb.

Description Adobe DPS (PDF or PNG)

TwixlMedia Publisher

Aquafadas Quark AppStudio HTML5

Quark AppStudio PDF

GWG010 Text_Size_SansSerif OK OK OK Some texts missing (only Italic shown in size 24)

OK

GWG011 Text_Size_Serif OK OK OK OK OK

GWG020 Images_Resolution OK Image with resolution 108dpi -‐> LowRes

OK OK OK

GWG030 Image_Profile OK OK OK

Wrong color conversion on ProPhoto tagged image + texts missing

OK

GWG040 Swatches_CMYK OK OK OK Texts missing (information about opacity)

OK

GWG041 Swatches_RGB OK OK OK

Texts missing (information about opacity and vector/image)

OK

GWG050 Spot_Color_Conversions

Different values depending on the original application and colorspaces





GWG051 Spot_Color_Alternate

Same color as result. Spot color name (and corresponding alternate)used for conversion (same as print/PDF export from InDesign)

Different colors as result. Alternate colorspaces used for conversion (same as screen/InDesign)



Same color as result. Spot color name (and corresponding alternate)used for conversion (same as print/PDF export from InDesign)

GWG060 HTML5 OK OK OK OK OK (but not PDF)

2.5 Results Discussion The summary table in section 2.4 shows the result of the DFT Suite testing with different crossmedia solutions. Here are some important observations and comments on these results:

- Missing text with AppStudio/HTML5: The solution does not work with InDesign templates, therefore the original InDesign document had to be manually modified to be used for testing. During this modification via Quark, it is possible that some text may have been missed. The GWG asked Quark to get new files to verify but did not receive get them. It is important though to note that templates can not be used with this solution.

- Image resolution with Twixl Publisher: The image in 108 dpi is rendered at a very low resolution. Twixl Publisher uses image export out of InDesign to render the file. Upon further investigation, the GWG identified that this issue is caused by a bug from InDesign (the same results occur through direct export from InDesign). The bug has been reported to Adobe but was not fixed at the time of this publication.


- Wrong color conversion with AppStudio/HTML5: The image in the center is not correctly rendered (the visual result is the same than the third image and not close to the first one). This is due to the fact that this solution does not do any color conversion and therefore it is important to only use sRGB content in the original source file to ensure a correct visual appearance.

- Spot/alternate color with Twixl, Aquafadas and AppStudio/HMTL5: The visual

result is incorrect due to the fact that these solutions are using an image export where the overprint is not honored. The solutions using PDF export are giving a correct result (Adobe DPS and AppStudio PDF). It is also important to note that Adobe DPS does a correct export with PNG export (overprint honored).


3 Conclusion and Further Information 3.1 Recommendations

The DFT Test Suite has proven to be a relevant tool for ensuring the correct rendering of cross media content on iPad devices. The GWG recommends anyone developing content for iPad viewing take advantage of this tools to predict the successful visual rendering of their designs on screen.

3.2 Conclusion The GWG has developed the DFT Test Suite to evaluate the visual otput of content on tablet screens. The GWG has used this Test Suite to successfully evaluate the major Digital Publishing Solutions currently in the market to help the industry to design content that achieves a seamless digital workflow with a predictive result on tablet. This work helps the end users to identify potential problems, give solutions to fix those problems and clearly describes where the different solutions behave correctly or not.

3.3 Further Information Further information about the Ghent Workgroup and the Cross Media Sub-committee can be found at www.gwg.org. For more information about Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, please visit www.adobe.com/products/digital-publishing-suite-enterprise.html. For more information about TwixlMedia Publisher, please visit twixlmedia.com. For more information about Aquafadas, please visit www.aquafadas.com. For more information about Appstudio, please visit www.appstudio.net. Disclaimer: The Ghent Workgroup goes through every possible effort to ensure the quality of this web site and the specifications it releases. Nevertheless, the Ghent Workgroup does not guarantee the correctness of the information it provides or its usability for specific purposes. We advise you to perform extensive reviewing and testing of specifications before they are used in any situation. The Ghent Workgroup furthermore does not accept any liability for any general, special, direct, indirect, consequential, incidental or other damages arising out of the use of the information it provides (in whatever form), even if the Ghent Workgroup would be advised of the possibility of such damages.

designed for tablets test suite and best practices · 2016-05-02 · - adobe indesign cs6 and cc -...

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