Bizarre Separation Issue

[jyarrow]

On a whim, I tried another tactic on this file which has been giving me grief. I used Quark's save as EPS function to save the file as an EPS and threw the generated EPS file at the RIP. On the RIP, the exact same thing happened.

I am getting to feel more and more that this is a FormsX/SecureX problem, and I am going to go to the company that creates it and pressure them to fix it. Going direct to EPS eliminates any PDF involvement.

Jim Y.

[Lukas Engqvist]

Just a word of caution very few rips will handle transparency over spot colour objects without converting the objects to process colours.
Even in Illustrator and InDesign if you have a transparent object above an object with spot colours you are askong for trouble. Spot colours need to be above all feathered object (or other objects with transparency) PDFx1 a supports spot colours, but you can never rename or remap colours, the same is true for eps.
Some times you need to think through your design and redo it. Transparency is a breeze as long as you stick to process colours. For SPOT colours you may be better off sticking to OVERPRINT.

Think of this if you have a PMS acting in mutiply or overlay what is it to do? This is why there is a transparency blend space (which you need to set to CMYK or RGB depending on your workflow).
PDFx is the only reliable way to go. but if you must have live transparency stick to PDFx4 at least it is a standard, with which the rip vendors can verify they support or not.

[jyarrow]

Just one more thing to add to this discussion (I don't remember when it started, very long ago): If I delete the Pantone color and force it to change everything on that (Pantone) plate to Cyan, then I get everything I need just fine on the single Cyan plate. So it's not an issue that the transparency can't work or RIP, it's an issue of kicking things from the plate where it belongs (PMS plate) to a plate where it does not belong (Cyan).

Jim Y.

[David Milisock]

I tried David's approach of starting with High Quality Press settings and making the few changes that he suggested. Then I tried Shaun's suggestion of exporting the PDF with native transparency.

When it hits Distiller, it sees the transparency setting turned on, then ejects the file and won't process it because the transparency is there. I can't find any place in Distiller to use the Adobe flattener, and I've been through the settings dialogs several times.

Any help on this would be appreciated as I'm trying to nail down a method to output these files from Quark consistently.

Thanks so much,

Jim Y.

Take the tansparent object into Photoshop and make it a spot color PSD file might work.

What's really weird is I regularly do this in CorelDRAW in Meta and Apogee.

[Lukas Engqvist]

@jyarrow If you move all to cyan then you are using transparency and process colours.
This is exactly what i been saying in all my posts spot colours and transparency are a different kettle of fish.

[David Milisock]

@jyarrow If you move all to cyan then you are using transparency and process colours.
This is exactly what i been saying in all my posts spot colours and transparency are a different kettle of fish.

Yes but transparency shoul dwork through N color space

[rich apollo]

Yes but transparency shoul dwork through N color space

Transparency with spot colors is pretty 'hit and miss'.

[David Milisock]

Transparency with spot colors is pretty 'hit and miss'.

I guess, but again you should be able to take it into Corel Photo-PAINT or Photoshop combine the objects with the non-transparent objects and make it a spot color PDF or EPS and place it.

[jyarrow]

Just to put this topic to rest, I finally figured out that all of the problems were specific to elements being created by the FormsX plugin, and it is a manufacturing error of that program. They have engineers working on it now.

Jim Y.

[David Milisock]

Just to put this topic to rest, I finally figured out that all of the problems were specific to elements being created by the FormsX plugin, and it is a manufacturing error of that program. They have engineers working on it now.

Jim Y.

Thanks for the update, sound logical!