Sort of
most of the time, most printers want Composite pdfs rather than Separated pdfs,
there are rare occasions when I want a separated pdf, for foil blocking for example, because I'm sending to someone who can't extract a Separation from a composite.
In Distiller its sometimes important to have a checkbox checked that would normally be off for composite PDFs.
Preserve Halftone Information
This allows most RIPs to recombine or at least know that the seps belong to a single page.
Eventually the 4 grays get printed on to plates (screened) as gray then the plates are inked up in the correct ink. I think in Acrobat their may be a way of displaying each separation in its own colour if it has the halftone info (separation color) in the page number box.
[<b>edited by:</b> Glenn McDowall at 8:02 AM (GMT -7) on 13 Oct 2009]
I'm thinking I'm wrong on the "Preserve Halftone Information" and that its something to do with DSC comments that holds the separation Name, but the PDF page number field should show the Separation Name.
... there was the puzzle of why the sun came out during the day, instead of at night when the light would come in useful.
Terry Pratchet