Albums and PDF files

I am a little perplexed at this problem and hoping someone can help me understand why... I do a lot of wedding albums design for a photog and their required workflow is very cumbersome and very inefficient. It seems most companies only accept jpg files or straight psds to be converted by the album companies conversion software for rip.

I had a friend attend WPPI this past week and she asked around for me and every company she visited, said the same thing, that PDFs dont give the same quality as high res jpgs. This left me stratching my head. I have been working in the printing industry for the past 10 years and currently at one of the largest text book publishers in the country. We use a PDF workflow exclusively and our printers recommend that as well. Quality isnt an issue.

Currently, I have to design album pages, file by file in photoshop. Makes it really hard to look at the overall album doing it this way. I would prefer to design it in InDesign and export it via high res PDF for printing. This would cut my production time in half but no one seems to want to accept files as PDFs.

Maybe I am missing something, but both Acrobat and Photoshop and InDesign use the same print engine, giving the same output quality. If the output printer profile settings are set correctly and comparible to a 240dpi PS file, there are virtually the same from a press point of view...

Looking on the album companies site, the only thing I can think as to why they dont accept PDFs is their file checker system. According to them, a PDF is created from that program out of a jpg... whichs seems rather backwards to me...

Anyone have any insight into this?

Thanks

A few years ago, i was working in the printing industry too, also establishing a PDF workflow.

I think, only a few people use high quality PDF creators / distillers like Adobe Acrobat. Most of them "just create a PDF" with simplified freeware and optimized settings for speed and file size, which is ok for text with embedded graphics. But not for hires pictures and high quality printing output. Common printing services do not want many complaints about their products because of wrong way created user input. The customer is always right...
So the easy way to avoid this problem from the scratch is to reject PDFs.

That's my 5c.

Piet wrote in post #7381431
A few years ago, i was working in the printing industry too, also establishing a PDF workflow.

I think, only a few people use high quality PDF creators / distillers like Adobe Acrobat. Most of them "just create a PDF" with simplified freeware and optimized settings for speed and file size, which is ok for text with embedded graphics. But not for hires pictures and high quality printing output. Common printing services do not want many complaints about their products because of wrong way created user input. The customer is always right...
So the easy way to avoid this problem from the scratch is to reject PDFs.

That's my 5c.

I can see that, but if thats the case, why not just say that? Instead of their reps telling my friend that PDFs dont produce the same quality... I wish I could have gone to WPPI and asked them directly cause what they have said is just plain wrong.