One page in my PDF is corrupt

[CathieH]

Hi there. Long time no see.

Anyway, I have a PDF file that's about 270 pages, a book, and it was printing fine until yesterday. Now, it'll only print up to page 52 then stop, thus making the KM 1050 driver say the printer is offline and I have to restart both the printer and the PC to get anything to print after that.

So without getting into all the details, I've discovered that page 53 of my document is corrupt. I can print every page in the document but that one. I've tried replacing that page from the original file that my customer sent me, but that didn't work. I have Acrobat Pro X and Pitstop Pro.

How do you fix something like this, anyone have ideas? Does Pitstop have something that might help?

Thanks!
Cathie

 

[Printease]

Have you tried saving out that particular page as postscript and re-distilling it? I have found that works on occasion. You can then add it back into the original document and hopefully be good to go.

 

[Emtri]

Also are you using an external fiery/creo? try importing the job through Command workstation (or the creo) rather then the print driver. This has helped solve a few odd PDF problems

 

[Greg_Firestone]

Do you get any messages or warnings when you open up the replacement file in Acrobat? Have you tested the replacement file on additional RIPs?

Regards,
Greg

 

[CathieH]

I have not exported and redistilled it, have not tried it on another rip and am not running it through a creo, just the driver. Even when I just try to print that page, it pops up in the 1050 driver print list then goes away. I get no error messages anywhere.

Anyway, you guys have given me some ideas, plus I'm pulling the page from the very original place it was first pulled when they put the document together.

So, we'll see what happens. Odd thing is, the page is of a man in a suit, carrying a briefcase and wearing a full face ski mask running away. LOL

 

[gig0]

2 things you can try if you want a quick fix:

Convert all the fonts on that one page to outline

OR

rasterize the page in Photoshop @ 600dpi

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

You wouldn't need to rasterise in PS you can export a page as a JPG or Tif from AcroPro... if that is what you want (there is even a print as bitmap in the print dialogu )

Definatly single out the page and get it working before recombining. You can remove varying parts until you see if it is text or graphics. First remove all text does it print? If so it's text problem. If not, revert to original remove all but text does it print? If so it's graphics problem if not it's structural.
Then work your way through graphics.

 

[MarkPinSac]

lukas nailed it. my exact solution.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

You wouldn't need to rasterise in PS you can export a page as a JPG or Tif from AcroPro.

I agree with Lukas in trying to narrow down the corruption instead of rasterizing, as any solution is better than rasterizing the page in my opinion.

That being said, it is common for some people to rasterize in desperation. As Lukas also notes, Acrobat has an option to print as IMAGE rather than as PostScript (this option is sticky and one must remember to turn it off before printing another file/page). There can also be other valid reasons why PDF content may need to be rasterized, such as web graphics or other cross media end use.

Lukas, the Acrobat image save as/export command produces sub-standard quality on text and vectors, when compared to rasterizing directly into Photoshop (I had a discussion about this on the forum with Dov once). Illustrator offers the most comprehensive set of rasterization options when compared to Acrobat or Photoshop, however it can of course be problematic to open a PDF into Illustrator so Photoshop is usually my preference.


Sincerely,

Stephen Marsh

 

[maas]

Any transparent artefacts on that page?, what PDF version are you printing too PDF 1.3?

regards
Maas

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Having a corrupt page means being forced into compromise, and each work around has it's limitations.
Text is the big problem, and can it be singled out that it is not a text problem, rasterising everything but the text and then placing the text on top is the best work around.

I would, if I had the time, print out as image (inspite of compromise) then try to fix in illustrator, by selecting all but text and line art (if possible) and rasterisning. Then to verify the image compare the illustrator with the rasterised (export or print) image from Acrobat.

 

[abc]

Corrupt page

Corrupt page

Is it possible you can upload the file or make it available for us to have a look at?

 

[CathieH]

What I did for a workaround

What I did for a workaround

As expected, only page 53 was the problem so I singled it out and deleted items one by one and tried to print, with no results. I wouldn't even print as a blank page, except when I removed it and inserted one.

Because this is a book I won't be printing often, I did this workaround: I took page 53 and 54 (they back each other up) and pulled them out of the document, made it a 2-page document of its own and substituted them with blank pages in the original document. I then printed the entire book on the 1050. The 2-page, 53 and 54 document, I sent to my Creo and printed them there. Then I took each book (I was only printing a few of them for inventory) and found the blank page and replaced it with the page I printed on the Creo.

I've had to make a note of this, as I'll have to do it this way in the near future until I can get the problem figured out. I'll attach the original document and you guys can play with it. It was too big to attach the whole file, so I deleted all the pages after page 54.

I'd like to say there's a prize for the one who fixes or figures out what's wrong with my file, but all I have to give is a pat on the back.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

@Cathie
it's the hood that's being cencored ;P nah just joking...
There are two things i would susspect. you have a blank square up at the top left corner.
The more probable is the clipping path! When you delete things are you sure you manage to delet the clipping path? You should be able to make the design with no clipping path since it is only making the background white, and it should be the back object any way. You probably have two points too close together. Do you have the source art for this project (best to allways resolve at source if possible)?

 

[CathieH]

No, I don't have the source art for this project, only the PDF. What I believe happens when the file is built is that for pages like this one, a PDF is pulled off of our website, then put into a Word document then once all pages are in place, all is exported as a PDF.

This type of book is NOT done by our in-house graphics department, rather all the articles are put together nilly willy, from whatever source (Word, Excel, PDF, etc.), all put into a Word document and then exported as a PDF. I'm really rather surprised I haven't had this problem before.

If I continue to have this problem, I probably would be able to get CS or even just Illustrator and/or Photoshop, we have a multiple use license. But since it's just this one job, I don't think it's worth trying to get.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

The file says it's an Acrobat file…*shame we don'g get breadcrum meta data to tell us who was the clown…*here is a new page 59 should work for you. (I'm so tepted to fix the yellow cast in the lower pict)
I'll PM u a replacement file.

 

[zlatan24]

For solving out like trouble you can use repair pdf. It can work out troubles with .pdf files after virus attacks, power failures, lost data and etc. It has easy to use interface and can work with big pdf files under all major versions of Windows OS.