While automation is the holy grail for most companies, there are also moments when you need to manually inspect or fix PDF documents. And in automated workflows, you still need to manually create and test the necessary automation configurations. For all of those scenarios, callas has Desktop versions of their solutions. For maximum flexibility, these work as standalone applications, but can be used as plug-ins for Adobe Acrobat as well.
Built on top of Adobe PDF Library technology, the callas Desktop solutions provide an accurate view of any PDF file. Moreover, the preview is exactly the same as what you would get if the PDF is printed, including more complex matters like fonts, overprint and transparency.
Going further than just previewing the document, the Desktop solutions allow more in-depth views. You can see the amount of ink on the document, identify areas with too much or too little ink, areas that are outside of the color gamut of the PDF file, or simply preview individual separations. An additional wireframe view is helpful to diagnose problematic PDF documents and helps visualizing how they were constructed. If multiple versions of a PDF are available, the Desktop has a comparison mode to see the differences between versions.
The desktop solutions provide manual quality control; this gives insight into what may be wrong with an individual file and allows creating a preflight report to communicate those issues to other people. The Desktop applications also make it possible to correct the problems that were identified and immediately judge the result. Due to the flexibility of the tools, such manual fixing possibilities can be fine-tuned to what is needed in each workflow.
One remarkable feature of the Desktop solutions is the Switchboard. This little window brings together the major functionality in the Desktop products and makes it immediately available to use on a single PDF file or a folder with many PDF documents. Need to quickly create a step-and-repeat of a label? Or convert a PDF to grayscale? Remap a spot color? Convert text to outlines? All of these things are available with a click of the mouse with the Switchboard.