Hard edges and InDesign Effects

disbellj

Well-known member
I have an InDesign job that I ran through Nexus 7.5. After the job was printed, the customer wanted to reprint because of a type change. While they were looking at the printed piece, they also noticed hard edges where the art should have went to 0 (fade). So we have to reprint the whole job.

I've went back and saw that my plates had a hard edge (too many points, so took away all points except 7 points I needed to smooth the curve. So I kept points 0,25,40,50,60,75,100 and mathematically smoothed the curve. Where a 1% was output to the screened TIFF as a little over 4% (DANG!) it's now coming out from screened file as almost 2% (I had fixed this before, but had to go back to Nexus 7.5, so have to use old curve software too, and forgot to fix this again when I was forced to go back to 7.5, and hasn't bit me until now). So plates are as fixed as I can get them (since the platesetter guy said a 50 should come out a 45 naturally and that I needed to use a calibration curve to linearize if needed, and this is what I've been doing, so taking away the points on the low end is now not causing as much problems).

I've also looked at my proofing, and noticed that my new paper that they started sending me for both proofers were different and I had re-calibrated the proofers with the new paper. But I did iterate the Match in CromaPro XP to make sure I am as close to our custom press condition as I can get (which it may have bumps in it, I don't know, and have asked for my boss to move to GRACoL2006_Coated1v2, but up to this point haven't gotten a response).

Finally, I looked at the job in question, and saw that at one spot, the customer had a gradation going from 8% Black to White on a circle that is 7.4717 inches, and then added a 1 inch diffused Basic Feather (no noise applied). I could see why there's banding in this instance, and although my plates are as fixed as I can get them, my proof is still showing banding (yes the Match has already been iterated). In another instance, the customer built a 5 inch Directional Feather Effect (no noise). Another instance, the customer used a 3 inch Directional Feather Effect (no noise) and added a Gradient Feather on top of that. On my proofs, all these show a hard edge.

I have to export PDF/X-1a to my rip for this job.

Is there anything I can do (maybe add noise, and how much?) in InDesign to the Effects, to keep the banding and hard edges from occurring? I have done about everything I can think of, short of calling in a expert.

Thank you for your responses.

Don
 

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