These Settings control how AVA handles different file formats. AVA supports: TIFF, JPEG, MST, Stork Public, PSD, PDF, PICT, PNG, BMP, GIF.
AVA
Choose how to handle document specific overprint settings.
Import
- Document - will use document specific settings saved within the .ava4 file format
- Applications defaults - will override the document specific settings with those set as your application settings
- Ask - will alert you when the Document and Application settings are different, and ask you to choose which settings to apply
- Don’t Display Notifications For Auto-Updated Settings - stops warnings appearing when the settings have been automatically updated
Export
Choose how much compression to add to .ava4 file formats. The closer you push the slider to ‘Better,’ the longer your document will take to save.
Make
- Old custom icons (stops Quicklook previews) - does not apply a Quicklook preview to your saved document
- Quicklook previews (recommended) - applies a Quicklook preview to your saved documents, making it easy to locate files in the Finder
Import
PSD
Open which layers from file:
- All - will import all of the layers as previous versions of AVA would do.
- Data Layers - will give all of the layers except the Flattened Image layer
- Flattened Image Layer - will only give the Flattened Image layer
- Ask Each Time - will present a dialog to the user every time they open a PSD file and is the default setting
- Ignore Non AVA Compatible Layers - this will only bring in the layers that AVA understands and will discard anything else. The dialog that appears on opening provides the same options as those in Settings , as well as a ‘Don’t Ask Again’ check box. This will save those settings to the user Settings
- Override resolution - if you want PDF files to open with their given resolution, leave this option unticked. If you wish to override the given resolution, tick this option and enter your preferred resolution
Open each page as:
- Auto detect - the layer types are automatically detected from the source file on a per layer basis on open and are remembered when saved. This means that a file containing a combined image and separations will automatically open as an image and spot layers.
- Spot layer - opens as an 8 bit layer
- Image layer - opens as a 24 bit RGB imag
- CMYK layer - opens as a 32 bit CMYK layer
- cmyK - opens different types of pdf (mainly used for packaging files)
When a multi-page PDF file is opened, AVA creates a layer for each page and each layer is named with its assigned page title (often a colour name).
- Allow antialiasing - controls the anti aliasing of PDFs and PDF compatible files (such as Illustrator®® AI). Antialiasing softens the edges of areas of a design with solid colour, solid vector and non antialiased edges
When the box is ticked, files will be antialiased on import. When it is not ticked, antialias will not be applied so the edges will remain solid and will retain the crispness of the original drawn edges (in relation to the chosen override resolution).
When the box is left unticked, artists dealing with flat colour designs or motifs created in applications such as Adobe® Illustrator®® (.ai) will be able to use the automatic separation techniques more effectively, without having to spend time cleaning up wrongly separated edge tones.
- Import the four first spot layers as CMYK - allows users to specify the first 4 layers of a multi-page or separated PDF to be compiled as a CMYK image, when opening into AVA. This particularly useful for users such as reprographers or engravers who need to work on a CMYK file directly from the original separations
Quicktime
Enables you to control the resolution in which Quick Time files are opened. These settings are used for openeing an aray of file formats, including .png.
Adobe® Illustrator®® files
Can be opened as either raster or vector layers
Export
When saving files as JPEG’s or TIFF’s, a window opens allowing you to specify a file quality. You can choose not to show this window by switching on Do not show JPEG/TIFF export dialog in this window. When this preference is switched on, all files will be saved at the quality you last specified. This should speed up your work flow when saving multiple JPEG’s or TIFF’s with the same settings.
When saving files, you can activate the option ‘Make custom icon on save’ to add a thumbnail preview of the design to its file icon. Custom file icons are also added to other file formats such as Tiff and Jpeg so you will benefit from preview icons on them too. However, as with all AVA versions and other third party applications using custom file icons, these previews will be lost if the files are stored on a server which is not able to retain the file’s ‘resource fork’, such as a non Mac®intosh file server.
If you save a multi layer AVA document as PDF, AVA saves each raster layer to a separate page (vector layers are not exported). Spot layers are saved as gray-scale images, Image layers as RGB images and CMYK layers as CMYK images. Therefore file size is optimised in addition to the possibility of recovering the original data by any PDF compatible application.
PDF’s exported from AVA include the relevant Author and Content information for the file. This information can be viewed in many third party PDF viewing applications such as Preview.
When using the feature Save Combined Copy As…, you need to have the Adjust White Point option ticked, as this will ensure the background colour of the Layout Window remains white when opened into third party applications,
You can also set a profile to accompany the new file. This profile is set in the Profile section and will help the file look the same when opened on other systems. The resulting image is created in the format of the profile and can be in RGB, CMYK or even L*a*b* space. Press the ‘Set’ button and locate a profile you wish to use.
Note: The profile needs to have a separation table in and be in icc format. You can use profiles located at:
System/Library/ColorSync/Profiles
Choose an RGB profile to make an RGB image or a CMYK profile to make a CMYK image
Default Profile
New in AVA Suite
Default Profile PathsIn AVA Suite the Default Profile Settings have been updated to include a more user-friendly interface. This makes selecting a profile much easier than previously.
Set a default profile to be applied to all your RGB and CMYK images which do not already have a profile assigned. This ensures commonly used colour spaces are applied the moment designs are opened.
Should you wish to change a pre-embedded profile to the default profile set here, you can Control click on the profile indicator in the Layer Palette and select ‘Set default profile’ from the contextual menu.
Default Spot Layer Colour
Used to specify the colour of spot layers when a file is opened when the document does not specify this itself.
AVA files specify their layer colours, so this preference is ignored upon opening AVA files. Tiff files however, do not specify this information and therefore would open with this ‘default’ colour in all spot layers.
AVA Printing Black is recommended to be used here as it will ensure that tonal movement is not visually compromised.
Previous Versions
Default Profile Paths
Set a default profile to be applied to all your RGB and CMYK images which do not already have a profile assigned. This ensures commonly used colour spaces are applied the moment designs are opened.
Should you wish to change a pre-embedded profile to the default profile set here, you can Control click on the profile indicator in the Layer Palette and select ‘Set default profile’ from the contextual menu.
Default Spot Layer Colour
Used to specify the colour of spot layers when a file is opened when the document does not specify this itself.
AVA files specify their layer colours, so this preference is ignored upon opening AVA files. Tiff files however, do not specify this information and therefore would open with this ‘default’ colour in all spot layers.
AVA Printing Black is recommended to be used here as it will ensure that tonal movement is not visually compromised.