PDF RIP errors - embedded image culprit

[jonkovach]

I have an Illustrator file that is a simple file - two colors, both CMYK builds, and outlined text. I am saving direct to PDF from Illustrator, in Acrobat 8 format. When I take it over to my RIP, it crashes.

There are a couple curious things about this file. One, I think I have it narrowed down to the embedded image as being the culprit. It is a transparent tiff embedded into the document. I do not have the link supplied to me, so I cannot do anything with the linked image. Any ideas on what I can do to it?

Two, and this is weird, it rips fine when I place it into one of my HP 5500's hot folders. It only gets RIP errors when I place it in one of the HP Z6100's hot folders.

I can save the file as an .eps and it rips fine. I can remove the image, and it rips fine.

I am getting an error in the RIP log - Error: VMerror, Offending Command: @showpage. The VM error tells me it is a memory thing - so I tried to downsample the PDF, compress the PDF, and downsample AND compress the PDF (all on PDF output out of Illustrator), but to no avail.

I did a live trace of the image, and expanded the trace to vector lines. That worked. However, none of these things that are working appease me. I want to know what is going on here.

If anyone wants to tinker with the file, it is located here:
http://www.kovacharts.com/pdf-to-z.ai

Thanks,
Jon

 

[WharfRat]

If I need the link back - I usually ...
- make my usual high end PDF of the Illy file
- edit image from that PDF
- save from Photoshop as PDF
- relink to the Photoshop PDF back into Illy.

MSD

 

[CHM]

I have imported your file in ArtPro en Nexus, no problem as far I can see. The image is a greyscale placed as a transparent Photoshop file in Illustrator.

 

[DavidMa]

It looks like the image has a mask on it and the mask is set to overprint, not the image. Release the clipping mask, set the image to overprint, then re-do the clipping mask and see if that doesn't work better for you


When I have an Illustrator file with embedded graphics like this, I select the graphic, copy it, then open Photoshop and create a new doc and paste it in and save. Then relink the new file in Illy to replace the embedded graphic.

 

[rich apollo]

If I need the link back - I usually ...
- make my usual high end PDF of the Illy file
- edit image from that PDF
- save from Photoshop as PDF
- relink to the Photoshop PDF back into Illy.

MSD

You can't do 'er on this one. In this PDF, the image is listed as a monotone using spot color Black. Photoshop hocks up an error when you try to edit the image. You have to convert the image to grayscale first.

I'd really like the Photoshop team at Adobe to rectify this. Or the PDF spec needs to be changed to disallow this kind of behavior.

 

[zoran]

I saved it as PDF and that PDF renders just fine to proofs and plates.
We are using Heidleberg Printready 3.5 with Adobe PDF Print Engine.

 

[mschilling]

You can possibly rasterize it in Illustrator. Careful that if it's a close cut image, there maybe a white box around it after rasterizing and you would need to make sure that it's behind surrounding graphics.

 

[WharfRat]

If I need the link back - I usually ...
- make my usual high end PDF of the Illy file
- edit image from that PDF
- save from Photoshop as PDF
- relink to the Photoshop PDF back into Illy.

MSD
You can't do 'er on this one. In this PDF, the image is listed as a monotone using spot color Black. Photoshop hocks up an error when you try to edit the image. You have to convert the image to grayscale first.

I'd really like the Photoshop team at Adobe to rectify this. Or the PDF spec needs to be changed to disallow this kind of behavior.

-----

I was able to do it to the file you posted the link to.
Worked just fine.
Are you working on a different image?

MSD

 

[rich apollo]

I was able to do it to the file you posted the link to.
Worked just fine.
Are you working on a different image?

MSD

I was playing with the one that was posted - the "a-to-z" file. I got the "unsupported colorspace" error from Photoshop.
Now if I converted the file to grayscale, then I could edit the image. I was trying to avoid rerasterizing the image. I could have opened the PDF in Illustrator, copied the image, and pasted into (or created a new file) in Photoshop.

 

[phantasm]

Hi Jon,

Sorry I hadn't come across this post earlier but hope this is still of help...

I achieved the following with the aid of our Illustrator plugin, Phantasm CS Studio ( Phantasm CS | Designer | Studio ). It allowed me to export/in-line-edit the embedded image and better examine separations.

Examining the original Ai file, I noted that the image was indeed an embedded grayscale with alpha transparency within a clipping mask - even though the clipping mask didn't appear to serve any purpose. The easiest way I could think of was to edit the embedded image in Photoshop by flattening the layer to remove transparency and then update this image back into Ai. Once back in Ai, I could then simply define the grayscale image with Overprint, which should also remove any registration issues.* (Ensure you have the Overprint Preview rendering mode enabled to see this correctly.)

The important factor is that at no stage was the image re-rasterized, ensuring no additional pixel interpolation or compression took place. Also, the in-line editing ensured that the image remained in the same location/resolution without any additional work.

I would be very surprised if this file now causes any print issues. The use of transparency with grayscale may have been the problem?

The final change I did was to change all the black text to overprint.

You can see/download the results here:

Index of /printplanet

Note that I have also included fully separated PDF versions of the original and modified files. Note that the original file fully separated is 15.1Mb whilst the modified version is only 4.1Mb even though the image is of identical quality! You can view the separations even in Acrobat Reader by using the PDF Layers control. This was created using Phantasm CS Studio's full separation tool.

Best wishes,

Nick


* There could have been something strange about the Ai file/image. I found that I needed to convert the image to grayscale (Edit > Edit Colors > Convert to Grayscale) within Ai to allow Overprint Preview to render correctly. This is not normally necessary.