Bizarre Separation Issue

[jyarrow]

We have a job which is set up in QuarkXPress 8.5 using FormsX and SecureX. This is for a check. On the top of the check, we have a pantograph created in SecureX which has a gradation from 80% to 20% PMS 564 U. Under this, there is a solid box with a straight screen of 8% PMS 564 U.

If I send "separations" from Quark to a local printer (Xerox Tektronix printer), the file separates out fine, with both fields appearing on the PMS 564 U plate. However, when I create a PDF X-1a then send that over to my spool folder, that's where the weirdness starts.

When previewing the job, the bottom screen is on the PMS 564 U plate, and the gradation on the top of the form shows up on the Cyan plate. We are completely perplexed as to why this might be happening. When we called the company that has been supporting us (who sold us the system) they suggested changing the PMS color, so we switched it out for PMS Pantone Blue, and got the same weirdness.

We tried exporting from Quark to EPS and PDF and building the imposition in Adobe Illustrator, and in the EPS case, lost the top part of the form entirely, and in the PDF case, the file took forever to rip (over 45 minutes) and put the top part on Cyan and the bottom part on the PMS 564 plate again.

We (of course) figured out that to get the job out, that simply changing the bottom color to Cyan would put both on the same plate, which is what we did, but I still would like to know what is causing the problem and if anyone knows of a solution for it.

Thanks so much in advance,

Jim Yarrow
Maccimizer

[John Clifford]

I'm going to guess that making it a PDF/X1-a is the problem. X-1a forces transparency to be flattened. Without seeing it, I'm going to again guess that there is something that is interacting with the transparency, in essence saying that this color and this color makes the original something with a CMYK blend (although all on the Cyan plate).

Sorry, it's 4:30 am and I'm not sure this is very clear.

[jyarrow]

I'm going to guess that making it a PDF/X1-a is the problem. X-1a forces transparency to be flattened. Without seeing it, I'm going to again guess that there is something that is interacting with the transparency, in essence saying that this color and this color makes the original something with a CMYK blend (although all on the Cyan plate).

Sorry, it's 4:30 am and I'm not sure this is very clear.

Interesting and very possible theory. This Pantone color is sitting on top of another Pantone color. I hadn't considered PDF-X1a as a possible culprit.

Jim

[Lukas Engqvist]

Do your separations look OK when viewing in Acrobat?
Do you have a "normalising" routine or any preflight "fixes" in your RIP. On older RIPs forcing white to knock-out or re-naming/re-mapping Spot colours could be a problem. Even a thing like moving from "PMS 564 U" to "Pantone 564" can mess things up.

What RIP including version are you using?

[jyarrow]

This is a stock installation of the Xitron Navigator Rip 8.3 rev 1. We have not (to my knowledge) installed any modifications to how the rip handles files (no preflight "fixes" or normalizing routines that I am aware of).

There is only one Pantone spot color specified and it's used in both cases. The previous answer I got regarding transparency "kicking" the plate to Cyan actually makes some sense in a weird way, because the upper panel (getting kicked to Cyan) is transparent and sitting atop another Pantone color and at least a half dozen layers used to construct a ghosted "shield" that sits behind the top layer.

[jyarrow]

I'm going to guess that making it a PDF/X1-a is the problem. X-1a forces transparency to be flattened. Without seeing it, I'm going to again guess that there is something that is interacting with the transparency, in essence saying that this color and this color makes the original something with a CMYK blend (although all on the Cyan plate).

Sorry, it's 4:30 am and I'm not sure this is very clear.

You were spot on. I took the PDF that we threw at the imagesetter, and ran it seps to our laser printer and saw exactly the same behavior ... the top section kicking to another plate. So it's not the RIP, it's definitely happening in the PDF process. One of our operators suggested sending this as a PS file, so I'm going to try that and see if it makes a difference. Thanks for pointing me in the correct direction.

Jim Y.

[Visualaid]

id say quark is your problem; replace the eps's with .tif's.
and it's probably all of those different screens and overlapping marquee's too.
check your pdf settings(distiller) maybe make a distiller setting specifically for that job.

[jyarrow]

id say quark is your problem; replace the eps's with .tif's.
and it's probably all of those different screens and overlapping marquee's too.
check your pdf settings(distiller) maybe make a distiller setting specifically for that job.

Rebuilding this in the way you suggest (changing all EPS to TIFF) is out of the question as there is no budget for making wholesale changes (and the time it would take to do this). Changing the bottom color gets both sets on the Cyan plate, so that's a workaround. For future jobs that we build from scratch, though, we'll be on the watch for this. Unfortunately, FormsX and SecureX seem to prefer EPS over TIFF.

C'est la vie.

Jim Y

[jyarrow]

You were spot on. I took the PDF that we threw at the imagesetter, and ran it seps to our laser printer and saw exactly the same behavior ... the top section kicking to another plate. So it's not the RIP, it's definitely happening in the PDF process. One of our operators suggested sending this as a PS file, so I'm going to try that and see if it makes a difference. Thanks for pointing me in the correct direction.

Jim Y.

Sending it as an EPS exported from Quark yields exactly the same result ... the type on the top gets kicked to the Cyan plate instead of printing on its' correct PMS plate. This is definitely some sort of Quark weirdness. The problem with this file is that it uses Digicomp's FormsX and SecureX to manufacture the security features, so doing it in another program (i.e., InDesign, Illustrator) isn't an option.

Jim Y.

[David Milisock]

We have a job which is set up in QuarkXPress 8.5 using FormsX and SecureX. This is for a check. On the top of the check, we have a pantograph created in SecureX which has a gradation from 80% to 20% PMS 564 U. Under this, there is a solid box with a straight screen of 8% PMS 564 U.

If I send "separations" from Quark to a local printer (Xerox Tektronix printer), the file separates out fine, with both fields appearing on the PMS 564 U plate. However, when I create a PDF X-1a then send that over to my spool folder, that's where the weirdness starts.

When previewing the job, the bottom screen is on the PMS 564 U plate, and the gradation on the top of the form shows up on the Cyan plate. We are completely perplexed as to why this might be happening. When we called the company that has been supporting us (who sold us the system) they suggested changing the PMS color, so we switched it out for PMS Pantone Blue, and got the same weirdness.

We tried exporting from Quark to EPS and PDF and building the imposition in Adobe Illustrator, and in the EPS case, lost the top part of the form entirely, and in the PDF case, the file took forever to rip (over 45 minutes) and put the top part on Cyan and the bottom part on the PMS 564 plate again.

We (of course) figured out that to get the job out, that simply changing the bottom color to Cyan would put both on the same plate, which is what we did, but I still would like to know what is causing the problem and if anyone knows of a solution for it.

Thanks so much in advance,

Jim Yarrow
Maccimizer

Why did you use PDFX1?