OpenRIP Flexo 6.0 & Trapping

[prepress@labels]

We send Illustrator CS3 files to a RIPit system (OpenRIP Flexo 6.0) and output them to an Epson proofer, and also to a PDF.

Once approved, the file gets dragged to a print queue for film output.

We select "Do Not Print" for the dieline color so it doesn't output.

This works great, except in a few cases where we see trapping effects produced by the dieline. The dieline is set to overprint, and the dieline color is switched to "Do Not Print" in the RIPit system, but we still see trapping effects from the phantom dieline which show up on film.

I've tried a variety of colors for the dieline trying to avoid trapping with the same results, and I've tried playing with different trapping settings (Spread, Choke, etc.) which produce varying trapping results but never eliminate the problem.

To summarize: the dieline color, set to overprint in the Illustrator file, should not produce any trapping effects, yet it does. At this point we have to either create 2 files (Print-ready and Proof) or delete the dieline in Illlustrator and resend.

We're doing option 1 now, creating 2 files on the same page, one with and one without the dieline. This is clumsy and must be explained to clients.

Option 2 is not really an option because re-outputting files after getting the file approved defeats the purpose of proofing at the RIP.

Any suggestions?

 

[jbbbarr]

Try to turn dieline into 0%, cmyk or any spot and see how that works. Should not try to trap 0% values.

 

[mschilling]

There should be another option for the dieline colour besides "do not print", which probably has nothing to do with trapping. Also if you choose overprint for the dieline colour for trapping, sometimes trapping software considers that overprinting colour an ink still, and do something like not trapping colours that butt underneath it. There should be a setting to make the dieline colour a technical type of ink, like an emboss, or varnish, where it will be ignored in trapping.

 

[prepress@labels]

There should be another option for the dieline colour besides "do not print", which probably has nothing to do with trapping. Also if you choose overprint for the dieline colour for trapping, sometimes trapping software considers that overprinting colour an ink still, and do something like not trapping colours that butt underneath it. There should be a setting to make the dieline colour a technical type of ink, like an emboss, or varnish, where it will be ignored in trapping.

Your reply sent me searching for somewhere I could change the type of ink, and I found it. In the Spot Color database in the RIP I found an option where I could define the Type of ink, so I switched our dieline color from Normal to Transparent. So far, two files we previously had problems with worked perfectly.

Nice! Thanks a lot for replying, this may be the answer I've been looking for.