PDF/X-4 Export

I’m using an HP Z9+, a PDF-capable printer. I know there aren’t many HP printer owners here, but I thought I’d share my method to avoid any bugs in the HP driver or issues with colorsync on macOS (every update seems to introduce new bugs).

To prevent these problems, I send files to the printer using HP Click. This method directly communicates with the printer, bypassing any driver and system color management.

The files are in PDF/X-4 format with 16 bits of color depth. They are already converted to the destination profile (the ICC profile is baked into the PDF, generated by Affinity V3). The files are set to 600dpi (the maximum input resolution for this printer) and are printed at the exact size. This ensures that no conversion or interpolation is performed. TIFF files were problematic with BPC, but PDF files print perfectly without any quality loss compared to TIFF files.

I wish I could export directly those PDF/X-4 files (with all the available PDF/X-4 options) from C1.