Checking the Output

Checking the output

Three checks, in order, each catching something the one before cannot. The tool does the first. You do the other two.

1. tayda-uv inspect

tayda-uv inspect -e 1590B -s A face.pdf

face.pdf: 1 page, 158.74 × 307.56 pt
  artboard: 56 × 108.5 mm            1590B side A OK
  colour:   DeviceCMYK               no RGB OK
  spots:    RDG_WHITE                OK
  order:    RDG_WHITE → CMYK         OK

inspect reads the finished PDF the way an unfamiliar program would, without trusting the code that wrote it, and checks the things the Tayda guide is strict about:

• artboard — one page, at a size that really is an enclosure side. With -e and -s it must be that side; without them it lists every side of that size.
• colour — the colour spaces in the file, and that no RGB got in. Tayda's process requires CMYK throughout.
• spots — the spot-colour ink names. They are case-sensitive; the guide is explicit that Rdg_White will not work, only RDG_WHITE.
• order — the order the layers are actually painted in. It must be White → CMYK → Gloss.

A file that fails shows a problem: line and the command exits 1:

face.pdf: 1 page, 158.74 × 307.56 pt
  artboard: 56 × 108.5 mm
  colour:   DeviceCMYK               no RGB OK
  spots:    RDG_WHITE                OK
  order:    RDG_WHITE → CMYK         OK
  problem: artboard is 56 × 108.5 mm but 1590B side B is 52 × 24 mm
error: 1 file did not pass inspection

It works on PDFs from other tools too — Illustrator, Inkscape, the web tool — so it can tell you whether a file you made some other way is shaped right for Tayda. Files it cannot fully read (encrypted, unusual compression) are reported as such rather than passed.

Always pass -e and -s after a scripted convert. Without them, inspect only checks that the artboard is some valid side, which will happily pass a file built for the wrong one.

2. Look at it

inspect checks structure. It cannot tell you the artwork is the right way up, that nothing important sits in the tolerance band at the edge, or that the colours are what you pictured. Open the PDF in any viewer and look.

On macOS, Quick Look renders a thumbnail from the command line:

qlmanage -t -s 800 -o . face.pdf    # writes ./face.pdf.png

Preview it with gloss off when judging colour. The RDG_GLOSS layer's on-screen preview colour is a stand-in, and a full-side varnish washes the whole thumbnail out — correct in the file, misleading on screen. Convert once with -gloss none to look at, then again with gloss for the upload.

3. Tayda's PDF Analyzer

Upload each PDF to Tayda's own PDF Analyzer, user pdfman, password pdfman. It is the final authority on whether they will print the file. inspect is written from the PDF specification and the guide, not from anything Tayda runs; if the two ever disagree, the Analyzer wins.

This step is deliberately manual. The Analyzer has an API, but it sits behind a login wrapped in reCAPTCHA, and scripting past bot detection that someone deployed on purpose is not something this tool does. If you want programmatic access, ask Tayda for it.

4. Order one first

Then order a single enclosure and look at it before committing to a batch. Colour on powder coat, the exact position of the print, and how the white undercoat reads through a soft edge are all things only the real thing will show you.