KB73059600: Automation Engine - Differences between the "Normalize PostScript / PDF / Illustrator 8.0 File" and "Normalize PDF file" tasks

Summary

Both the Normalize PostScript / PDF / Illustrator 8.0 File and Normalize PDF File tasks convert a generic PDF file to a normalized PDF file.

The Normalize PostScript / PDF / Illustrator 8.0 File ticket is an old ticket existing for a long time.

The Normalize PDF File ticket was introduced in Automation Engine 10.1.

Due to some issues (creating large files, slowing down speed during Normalization and Export - especially in Commercial Printing workflows) with the old task, the Normalize PDF File task was introduced.

Main advantages of the "Normalize PDF File" task

The Normalize PDF File task does not extract and uncompress images during normalization (e.g. when image data in the PDF file was already JPEG compressed) whereas the Normalize PostScript / PDF / Illustrator 8.0 File task extracts and uncompresses all images, leading sometimes to large file sizes in case of multi-page files.
Improvement in normalization speeds (especially for multi-page documents)
Smaller file sizes
Faster Export (especially for imposition files)

Depending on your type of work (multi-page or single page documents) you can choose between these tasks to normalize PDF files.

If you want to know more about Normalized PDF files (what makes them special) and which tasks require a Normalized PDF file as input, please check this link from help.esko.com: AE_PDFNormalization_WhitePaper.pdf

Article information
Applies to	Automation Engine 10.1 and newer
Created	10-Apr-13
Last revised	14-Apr-13
Article ID
Author	DOCA
CW number

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