Corrupt images when making PDF?

[Northern_Prepress]

I am currently running into an issue making PDFs from InDesign CS4. Lately, our company has been getting some rather large jobs in to print and that's when this all started.

The current job is 190 pages plus cover that will be perfect bound. The client, nor I can make one large PDF from this job so we have to break it up into sections. Usually each of the PDF sections has around 20-50 pages per.

Now the issue we're running into is that on some of the pages, an image will end up with a bar or lines in it that looks like white noise. Like the image information was lost for a short period of time during the PDF creation from InDesign.

Here is a picture of one of the pages and a close up on what's going on.

Now in order for me to fix this issue is to just make a single page PDF of the effected pages in the document. I just wish I knew what was causing this issue so I know how to avoid it in the future. So far four jobs have been affected like this; two 32 page + cover jobs, a 64 page + cover job, and is job.

We use a Rampage Workflow system here. My PDF settings in InDesign CS4 has all compression turned off, no profiles or color conversion turned on. I keep compression turned off because it seems sometimes, vector art done in Illustrator does not seem to come out looking well when RIP'd in Rampage.

My main computer is a 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac with 4 BG of memory running Mac OS X 10.5.8. My current version of InDesign CS4 is 6.0.3.

If anyone has run into this problem or if anyone has any helpful hints for me, I could really use them please. If you need more information from me, I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Thanks for all the help!

Roc

 

[zoran]

Is it repeatable on the same image/page every time?
Are you working from the server?
Did you try doing it locally, on your desktop and keep all links there too, not on server?
Are you sure image is not corrupted already, prior to making PDF's?
I've seen images having nice preview but when made Hi-res PDF they were corrupted, after checking original images, they were corrupted but had nice preview.

 

[Northern_Prepress]

Is it repeatable on the same image/page every time?
Are you working from the server?
Did you try doing it locally, on your desktop and keep all links there too, not on server?
Are you sure image is not corrupted already, prior to making PDF's?
I've seen images having nice preview but when made Hi-res PDF they were corrupted, after checking original images, they were corrupted but had nice preview.

On large files such as this one, I work directly off the desktop.

I've looked at all the images and they are all CYMK, no LZW, and seem to be just fine.

If I chose 20-50 pages out of the 190 to make a PDF from, the "white noise" lines will be random on which page/image it effects even if I make multiple PDFs of the same 20-50 pages.

I might either dump InDesign CS4 and reinstall it to see if that fixes it, or I might just erase my whole HDD and start from scratch. Problem is, this job is still on the press today being printed.

I do have another discussion going on this topic which can be found here: PDF Coruption Thread

I was desperate to find a solution so I posted on several "Prepress" type forums to get the word out and maybe a solution.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

It is most likeley an I/O error. We used to have this (occasionally) when we had a FPO server. I think you may just have too little harddisk, it may actually be that compressing the files will slow the system down so that it doesn't trip over itself.

How big is the free space on the computers main harddisk? How big are the files? What format are the images (jpg. tiff, psd or eps) If tiff or psd do the files have layers? What is the effective ppi of the images? Are images above a certain size downsmpled?

Is the file made in one or is it split in chapters and as an InDesign book?

 

[Northern_Prepress]

I currently have just over 221 GB left on my HDD. All the images are .tif, CMYK and no LZW turned on.

The packaged InDesign folder for this job is around 3.5-4 GB.

All the images are between 266-300 dpi and in my settings to create a PDF, I do not have Bicubic Downsampling turned on.

The 190 page book is not broken up and is one InDesign file.

Here is a sample of another job we did last week where 6 pages did the same thing. This job was done by another design firm.

 

[DavidMa]

does this happen on just the one Mac?

Have you tried dumping the CS4 prefs to see if that helps?

Restore all preferences and default settings

When InDesign is behaving erratically, deleting preferences (also referred to as “trashing preferences” or “removing preferences”) often solves the problem.
Do one of the following:

*(Windows) Start InDesign, and then press Shift+Ctrl+Alt. Click Yes when asked if you want to delete preference files.
*(Mac OS) While pressing Shift+Option+Command+Control, start InDesign. Click Yes when asked if you want to delete preference files.

from:
Adobe InDesign CS4 * Setting preferences

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

wrote a post that didn't stick, so I try again. Some years ago we had a computer that fed the CTP with ripped data, there were I/O issues either on ther raid controler or the harddisks... but the net effect was the same. Re-imaging the same file results would be fine.
On an iMac there is one hard disk, the head needs to be at least in three places… where the source image is, where the scrach is and where the output is (probably more) so you have the reading head skipping all over the place. Using one external drive for the job and another for the PDF, may be a solution? Splitting the file into chapters could also be a solution (back in the old days when we often had memory issues in the rips ungrouping was a way avoid overflowing memory circuts, talking of wich, it could be a faulty memory)

Have you tried using a standard out of the box PDFx setting? Could be that since you have pre processed files the compputers job is just restacking rather than processing… perhaps it tripps itself? and using a JPG maximum for images might evade the problem?

Now if I am not mistaken these examples are rotated images? (the scratch lines are not horisontal).

These are just some Ideas, trouble shooting by forum is really hard and it would be easier with the files... but then 3gig... not sure I want to download that

 

[oxburger]

On large files such as this one, I work directly off the desktop.

Are all your files on the desktop? or are you just writing your pdfs to the desktop? If you're writing the pdfs to the desktop, but the image information is being pulled from the server, it could be causing it. We had a similar problem when saving some photoshop files across the server and they ended up corrupt. If we saved them to the desktop and then copied to the server, they were fine.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

You can check in the path of a link if it is pulling it from the server. Easiest is to package the file to the desktop, that way you will relink all the package, if you just copy the folder, the link path will still be on the server until the file on the server is unavailable.

 

[mattbeals]

I'd be curious to know if you exported single page PDF's using Axaio MadeToPrint if the problem would still show up. Even if you don't buy it, which it would be a good investment , I wonder if single pages would yield the same data corruption.

 

[Stiv]

I know you have said they are TIFs without LZW.

Check this for me, is there any image compression, say JPEG?

I ask because this happens to me on occasion. I have Rampage and it cannot process TIFs that have JPEG Image Compression. The result is similar to yours.

 

[mattbeals]

I'm not sure that I've ever seen a JPEG compressed TIFF before, I've seen ZIP and LZW compressed TIFF's. I'm not sure why RAMPage would have a problem with a compressed TIFF if it's coming down in a PDF or EPS. If it's in an EPS wouldn't it either use no compression or JPEG compression?

 

[kyle]

Do you see the error in Acrobat? If so, the problem shouldn't have anything to do with your RIP system (unless you're using a feature of the RIP to make the PDF).

Try unchecking "crop image data to frames." The messed up area doesn't look like random noise, but rather like the pixels data doesn't match up with the width of the image, causing the pixels to be offset from one row to the next. Image data is often encoded in separate strips or patches to speed processing and reduce memory requirements. Maybe Indesign is goofing up the encoding of several of these strips when it is truncating the image on one or more sides. This will increase the size of your PDF, depending upon how much of the images are clipped by a frame.

Are the image containers simple non-rotated rectangles? If not, maybe the cropping function is buggy in that case.

Are the images 16 bit? I've seen odd problems with 16 bit images, but it usually involves the byte order getting swapped and the error is usually not limited to part of the image.

Do the images look okay in Indesign's high-res preview, in the Preview application, and in the OS X quick-look (press spacebar after selecting image in Finder)? Different programs handle corrupt data and other unexpected things in different ways, which means you can have an image that looks fine in one program and not another. This probably isn't the case since you are getting inconsistent output from Indesign depending upon the number of pages selected for output.

This one's probably a real long-shot: maybe another application is somehow using part of Indesign's allocated memory and screwing it up (or Indesign is using another application's memory concurrently) - this could account for the patterned appearance and also for the somewhat random behavior.

If you print a certain page range with the same settings several times, do you get exactly identical results?

 

[Glenn McDowall]

I've seen similar corruptions from InDesign and Quark, when you remake the PDF they are gone. If there is any anti-virus software I'd turn it off, if it gets worse I'd try and re-format or change the Hard Disk