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]

Stock installation

Stock installation

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]

quirk

quirk

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?

 

[Visualaid]

i have experienced, many times in quirk, eps's trouble separating; so i always used tifs. problem is if the tifs arent built as whatever spots, then you've got some pshop or illustrator work to do. im not there but i have a feeling it something really simple with the file like replacing those eps's, or check other graphics on the file to see if something weird is going on; maybe resave the eps's as eps's if you have to use eps's. sometimes that fixes the problem. and can't you open quirk files with indesign; id do that, get away from doing prepress work in quirk-too many dangers..
when you fix the problem, then figure out the hot key combination in quirk to make the robot appear and blow stuff up, its fun

 

[jyarrow]

Why did you use PDFX1?

Because it is most closely aligned with print standards that meet our needs. Converting colors to CMYK, using SWOP setup and etc. have worked well in our situation. The only thing that does not work well for us is the JPEG compression, so we used a PDF-X1a modified standard, with the JPEG compression turned off.

Besides, the problem happens when we are saving straight to EPS too, so it's not something being generated in the PDF process, but rather rogue PostScript being written by Quark when it converts from Quark format to PostScript.

Jim Y.

 

[jyarrow]

when you fix the problem, then figure out the hot key combination in quirk to make the robot appear and blow stuff up, its fun

OMG I haven't seen reference to this in over a decade. If my recall is correct this was an Easter Egg that appeared in QuarkXPress version 2. It was hilarious to watch, however.

Even though I'd love to find exactly what the problem is, I'm more interested in getting the results out that I need, and I've figured that part out. Reworking old files (especially ones as complicated as this) is a non-starter, as these are "repeat" jobs and there is no budget for the time-consuming process of rebuilding the job from the ground up. As long as we have a way to work around it, we're good.

Jim Y.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Sending as PDF is also flattened.

what I meant to write is that PDF, EPS and PS are flattened and if you have problems with transparency in one you will also have in the others.

 

[jyarrow]

And the plot thickens

And the plot thickens

The plot now thickens. Similar set of circumstances, but the pantograph is a simple TIF file which is stepped and repeated using the SecureX Panto tool.

The panto is not over anything, so transparency can't be an issue. the box around it outputs to the proper PMS color, but the panto gets kicked to the Cyan plate. Easy fix is delete the Pantone color and replace it where use to Cyan, where we get the desired effect, but it was suggested by someone that if we used TIF files that the problem would go away, and that doesn't seem to be the case.

Jim Y.

 

[David Milisock]

Because it is most closely aligned with print standards that meet our needs. Converting colors to CMYK, using SWOP setup and etc. have worked well in our situation. The only thing that does not work well for us is the JPEG compression, so we used a PDF-X1a modified standard, with the JPEG compression turned off.

Besides, the problem happens when we are saving straight to EPS too, so it's not something being generated in the PDF process, but rather rogue PostScript being written by Quark when it converts from Quark format to PostScript.

Jim Y.

Are you on a MAC or a PC, for the native Quark file?

 

[jyarrow]

All Mac Workflow except for RIP

All Mac Workflow except for RIP

For production we're an all-mac shop with the PC RIP being the exception. All files are Quark native files. Just had another set of plates shift 1/2 inch to the right with no good explanation.

Jim Y

 

[David Milisock]

For production we're an all-mac shop with the PC RIP being the exception. All files are Quark native files. Just had another set of plates shift 1/2 inch to the right with no good explanation.

Jim Y

Ok MAC 10.6?
PC RIP Version?
Windows XP, Server? System Specs, RAM, HD space?

Can I assume that you create a PS file then Distill to a PDF?

 

[rich apollo]

The panto is not over anything, so transparency can't be an issue.

That is not accurate. There can be elements employing transparency effects within the graphic.

What you've described sounds like the result of transparency being employed with spot colors. Can you create the PDF without flattening? According to their web site, Quark v8 incorporated the ability to export unflattened PDFs.

 

[David Milisock]

That is not accurate. There can be elements employing transparency effects within the graphic.

What you've described sounds like the result of transparency being employed with spot colors. Can you create the PDF without flattening? According to their web site, Quark v8 incorporated the ability to export unflattened PDFs.

I agree I'm not sure but if memory serves PDF X1 does not support N color space.