One of my clinets had a very serious problem when combining files into a single PDF before optimizing the file to build a press-ready PDF.

As you will see in the attached screenshots, while they were combining 256 pages of a book into a single PDF, the continuous tone image of page 239 appeared on both page 238 and 239. While the speech balloons are on their correct pages, the image on page 239 appeared on page 239 as well as page 238. The image on page 238 has been mysteriously replaced by the image on page 239. As this was a book with more than 1000 pages this error has slipped through all eyes. They could have only seen this error if they had printed an inspection copy from the multi page PDF and visually checked each page with the single page PDFs. My client has been doing this for many years and processed similar books successfully. They had no indication that such a disaster was coming.

The book is printed and distributed. And now angry readers are coming back to the publisher for an explanation. Why has this happened? Is there a way to check the integrity of a multi-page PDF after combining it from single pages?

This is a serious problem that can put an end to the relationship between the publisher and the printer.

What can be done to prevent a similar problem happening again?

Best regards,

Refik Telhan, EE BSc,
Light and Color Management Consultant
Istanbul, Turkey