Illustrator/ArtPro/Prinergy

[Old Dog]

Lord help us. These Illustrator shadows/gaussian blurs are going to kill us all. We were just informed by a printer that they are seeing super fine lines all over the background spot color. We send them DSC2 files exported from ArtPro. They run it through Prinergy and convert it to a PDF. We zoom in to pixel level in ArtPro and cannot see these fine lines. We do see overlapping boxes if we select all, which seem to be the background color. The only thing I can figure is the shadowing added in Illustrator is causing a translation problem when importing into ArtPro. I am going to try to rasterize the shadows and if that doesn't help I will also flatten them to see if they will import intact and not cause this breaking up issue. If anyone has an idea please let me know.

 

[Jose Gonzales]

Can you describe your flow? How did you saved/exported your AI file (EPS/PDF)? If PDF which version of PDF did you used? (1.3 or higher) Which version of AP are you using? How do you export out of AP? DCS2??? Why not as a PDF?

There is also a post on how to handle images from AI to AP

http://printplanet.com/forums/eskoartwork/14453-aics3-into-artpro-package-what-format-image-files

 

[Old Dog]

We don't have much of a workflow per se. The printers we send work to have Prinergy workflows. We work with Illustrator CS3 files. We have tried several ways to save from CS3. Normally we save as EPS for import to AP 8.3 (we have up to 9.0 but our guy likes 8.3). After we trap the files we generate a DCS2 file to send to the printer. When they created a PDF from our files thru their workflow they can see fine lines all over the background.

We have tried saving out of CS3 as a PDF 1.4 using Press Quality. The DCS2 file from this will be sent to this printer to have them test it and see if the fine lines are showing up. We have checked the AP file they are having issues with but even when zoomed on pixel level in AP we cannot see these fine lines. Is this a result in how they are using our DCS files in their workflow or is it something that we can do differently on our end.

The reason we do not export a PDF to them is they want a DCS file. We also have another printer that wants a trapped Illustrator file so we export out of AP. We deal with six different printers for packaging work and each has their own requirements for files sent to them. Only one wants PDFx1A files sent to them. We constantly battle different issues created by designers that feel they have to use every feature Illustrator has to make our job harder. AWS blames Adobe for incompatibility problems and calling their help desk usually produces little help.

I read the post about image files and was wondering why they relink to high res in AP. Most of the files we deal with have the images embedded already and the ones that are not are a combination of PSD, Tiff or EPS images out of Photoshop. We don't normally seem to have issues doing it this way versus relinking on import. Am I missing something?

 

[pcmodem]

Unless I am missing something, there is no reason to save out as a DCS file, since DCS files are rasterized and they are using Printergy. Prinergy uses PDF so it would only make sense to give them a PDF so they don't have to convert your DCS file to PDF. Perhaps they had a Brisque workflow before and wanted DCS files and have not changed their request form since then.

 

[Old Dog]

We send what they ask for PC. I will discuss this with them since they seem to be converting the DCS to PDF anyway. We deal with several printers and they all have their differences in files accepted. Since I am not familiar with Prinergy or Brisque I am at a disadvantage in understanding workflow systems.