Adobe PDF Files:

For customers wishing to generate their own Adobe PDF files for print production, J.S. McCarthy Printers has created a thorough set of documentation explaining the steps necessary to produce clean, press-ready PDF files. You can download the appropriate instructions and tools for the operating system and programs you use below. If you have any questions about preparing press-ready PDFs to our specifications, feel free to email the JSM technical support staff.

PDF Creation Instructions
Full PDF Creation Kit - These archives contain all the files listed below for PDF creation on the Mac or PC platform.
Full Mac Kit (3.1 MB)
Full PC Kit (5.4 MB)

JSM Acrobat Instructions - This PDF contains instructions for installing and using the JSM Job Options and Creo Distiller Assistant in Acrobat Distiller. Download and use this guide along with the instructions for creating Postscript files in your specific design program.
MAC/PC Download

JSM Job Options - Use these settings in Acrobat Distiller (versions 4-8) to produce a clean pdf. The JSM Acrobat Instructions file (above) has complete installation instructions. Each download contains these joboptions:

JSM High JPG: High-Res PDF for Press with Maximum Quality JPG compression. Most people use this setting. These files are visually indistinguishable from the originals but are much smaller. This setting is ideal for PDFs being sent through the Internet.

JSM High Zip: High-Res PDF for Press with Zip (lossless) compression. These PDFs are much larger in size than the High JPG pdfs so they work best for PDF files sent on disk.

JSM Email: Low-Res PDF for proofing purposes only. This setting produces PDFs that are small enough to email to a client for approval, but at a resolution setting that is too low for final printing.

Acrobat 4 Joboptions (Mac/PC)
Acrobat 5 Joboptions (Mac/PC)
Acrobat 6 Joboptions (Mac/PC)
Acrobat 7-8 Joboptions (Mac/PC)

Creo Distiller Assistant - This free plug-in from Creo contains many bug fixes for Acrobat Distiller.
Mac/PC Download

JSM PDF Preflight Profiles - Acrobat Professional includes built-in preflight features that can find common production problems in your PDFs. Download and install these profiles to double check your PDFs before sending them for output. Profiles are inlcuded for jobs that use Spot colors only, CMYK only, or both Spot and CMYK colors.
Mac/PC Download

Adobe PDF ppd - This is the generic printer description file from Adobe for use with Acrobat Distiller.
Mac/PC Download

InDesign 2: Print Postscript File - This PDF contains instructions and the correct settings for printing PostScript files under InDesign 2 on Mac OS 9, OS X and Windows.
MAC Download
PC Download

InDesign CS(1): Export PDF - PDFs created using the export filters in InDesign CS(1) will work correctly in our workflow. Download, decompress and install this settings file and/or use the information in this instruction guide to correctly create clean PDFs from InDesign CS(1).
MAC or PC Export Filter
MAC or PC Instructions

Adobe InDesign CS2 or CS3: Export to PDF -
This guide contains full workflow information for creating, checking and sending PDFs from Adobe InDesign CS2 and CS3.
MAC or PC Instructions
Acrobat Joboptions for Creative Suite 2 or 3 (Mac/PC)

Adobe Creative Suite 2 or 3: Export to PDF -
PDFs created using the export filters in Creative Suite 2 or 3 will work correctly in our workflow. Download and install the JS McCarthy job options for Acrobat 7 then use the information in this guide to create clean, press-ready PDFs from Adobe CS 2 or 3 applications.
MAC or PC Instructions
Acrobat Joboptions for Creative Suite 2 or 3 (Mac/PC)

Pagemaker: Print Postscript File - This PDF contains instructions and the correct settings to use for printing PostScript files in PageMaker 6.5 or 7 under Mac OS 9 or Windows.
MAC Download
PC Download

Quark XPress: Print Postscript File - These PDFs contain instructions and the correct settings to use when printing PostScript files in Quark XPress under Mac OS 9, OS X or Windows.
MAC OS9 - Quark 4 or 5
MAC OS X - Quark 6 Workflow
PC - Quark 4 - 6

Quark XPress: Export as PDF - The Quark Export filter doesn't always create clean PDFs. For best results we suggest that you print a postscript file and use Acrobat Distiller to make your PDFs. If Acrobat is not available than this instruction sheet contains screen captures that show the correct settings to use when exporting PDFs in Quark XPress 6 or later in OS X or Windows.
Exporting Quark PDFs

Microsoft Publisher - This page has instructions for preparing Publisher files for commercial printing and contains information on several different methods for creating PDFs in Publisher.
Publisher PDF and file preparation

Creating PDFs with CutePDF - Adobe Acrobat is the preferred method for creating PDFs, but the free CutePDF print driver can also be used. This PDF contains step by step instructions for installing and using CutePDF in Windows.
CutePDF Instructions
CutePDF Homepage
CutePDF download
Ghostscript Postscript Processor for CutePDF