Montag, 3. Dezember 2012

Analyze PDF-documents for coloured pages

The calculation of printing costs for pdf-documents separated
for each serviceline or department in a company is always a
problem. How many pages - coloured or black & white - were printed?
Which were the dimensions of the printed pages? Which are the
responsible company departments? And finally: Who should be
responsible for the costs of new toner cartridges?

Internally the pdf-structure offers the device-flags like
- for example - DeviceRGB, DeviceGray oder DeviceCMYK which
points to the used colours in the document. Better: It could
point 'cause it's not a must to use device-flags in the pdf-
document. It's possible to have coloured pages in a document
with DeviceGray and it's possible to have coloured and b/w-pages
in a document without any device-flag and it's possible to
have only b/w-pages in a document with DeviceCMYK and so on...
So the device-flags are only indicators for the used colour-
models in a document but not a save method to determine
coloured pages.

This is a big problem in service-departments! There are
solutions available ... very expensive solutions.

For the described purpose i'm offering in my product range
the module "PrPages". It's a so-called command-line exe.
A batch executable means easiest installation with all
applications and workflows in 32 - and 64-bit Windows
environments without any problems!

The module's approach is that the real colour informations
are in each image pixel and based on this informations
you can make the only reliable statement regarding the
used colours on a pdf-page.
The graphic type bitmap offers three values for colour-
settings on pixel level. "PrPages" renders the pdf-pages
temporarily into bitmap format and checks the pixel values
for the colour informations to analyze the pages as b/w or
coloured.
Depending on the options you have set, a csv-file is created.
Each line contains the filename, the page count, the page
size of the first page, the pagecount for coloured and
the pagecount for b/w-pages.
Another option results in one line for each pdf-page with
the filename, single page number, the page size and a note
for b/w or coloured.

Depending on the system environment the module works with
high performance using a safe and stable technology.
On my product pages you'll find the "PrPages" as a trial
version to check if the tool is the right choice for your
purposes - Try before you buy.