Strange shifts in QuarkXPress imposition layouts

[jyarrow]

I am assisting a company that does custom form printing and we are seeing some strange things happening when RIPping jobs created in QuarkXPress going to the Xitron Navigator RIP.

We have a single template for the one plate size that we use, with the hash marks in the upper left as they need to be for the specific presses we use. We use the same template base for every single job.

We have been noticing that over the past few weeks, inexplicable "shifts" on the horizontal axis are happening for jobs imposed in Quark. We will have a job based on the same template that we have used over and over with accurate placement, and all of a sudden the output on the RIP will be shifted on the horizontal axis from 1/2" to 5/8" (sometimes too far left, sometimes too far right).

This is a complete mystery because absolutely nothing in our template file is changing, yet the placement on the RIP (and ultimately the plate) is changing. This has never happened with our Adobe Illustrator templates, only the Quark templates.

Has anyone seen anything like this occurring? We have the Quark templates, because we had some experiences where when we exported jobs from Quark to EPS, things "disappeared", so we felt it was much better to keep jobs generated in Quark (we have many of those) in Quark all the way through the workflow.

Thanks so much,

Jim Yarrow

 

[Al Ferrari]

Welcome to the quarky world of Quark.

What versions of Quark are involved?

What are you sending to the Navigator RIP? Quark generated pdfs or ps files? Are they exported, or printed from Quark? Has there been a recent upgrade to any of the Quark installations involved? Have there been any other software or system upgrades in any of the work stations involved?

The devil is in the details. Please give as much detail as possible about what happens between Quark and the rip. Since the shift varies leftward or rightward, is there anything on the pasteboard? Might there be a stray point in an imported graphic placed in the Quark layout?

Al

 

[jyarrow]

What versions of Quark are involved?

Quark 8.5, patched to the latest version.

What are you sending to the Navigator RIP? Quark generated pdfs or ps files?

Quark-generated PDF files, PDF-X1a modified to turn all JPEG compression off (this was causing problems in that it was "averaging" some of our more complex pantographs, destroying them in the process).

Are they exported, or printed from Quark?

All are PDFs exported from Quark

Has there been a recent upgrade to any of the Quark installations involved? Have there been any other software or system upgrades in any of the work stations involved?

If you are asking if things were fine on day 1, whereas things were borked on day 7, and an upgrade occurred in between the two, no. This was all newly installed Quark and systems installed about a month and a half ago and all upgraded at that time. No upgrades, system, Quark or otherwise since then.

Since the shift varies leftward or rightward, is there anything on the pasteboard? Might there be a stray point in an imported graphic placed in the Quark layout?

Not that I know of, but it's a good thing to check. I will examine the particular files in question. Generally, we go into the original file, put the uppermost hash mark in so that we can position it correctly on the plate template, then copy and paste it into the template. Almost always that results in a "clean" file, but thanks for giving me that to check into ... I will explore that further.

Jim Y.

 

[pcmodem]

A word of caution about taking one Quark document and copying the contents into another Quark document. If the document settings are different, it may effect type flow or line spacing depending on how the file was created.

 

[jyarrow]

Not generally a problem in our situation

Not generally a problem in our situation

This is not generally a problem in our situation as most of our work is forms, but we do have bodies of text at times. Good to be reminded that we need to doublecheck for this.

Jim Y.

 

[pcmodem]

I do have a thought for you but it would completely change your workflow, but would eliminate problems like I mentioned.

Save out a PDF from any application your artwork is in. Then place the PDF into an InDesign template. This would allow you to have just 1 template instead of 2 (Quark and Illustrator).

Just a thought.

 

[mattbeals]

So are you placing a PDF generated by Quark back into Quark? This screams "really bad idea". Do you have this problem when saving EPS's out of Quark?

 

[Emtri]

Your imposing this (for the sake or argument I will say 6up) in Quark? When in the imposition window. if you give it 2 rows and 3 columns and then decide you want 3 rows and 2 columns, job depending for portrait or landscape this often causes an error. re-opening quark will fix and you just make to make sure you select the correct layout the first time.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Sometimes an imposition software is worth the extra money?

 

[jyarrow]

So are you placing a PDF generated by Quark back into Quark? This screams "really bad idea". Do you have this problem when saving EPS's out of Quark?

I would have to answer heck no to this question. That would be insane. I am taking documents created in Quark and copying the layouts into my stripping template and step and repeating them as needed. It's really not all that complicated. These are simple forms, which need to go either two up or four up (occasionally three or six up). None of this is truly "imposition" (like a book would be).

Since we're doing forms on continuous presses, there are all sorts of odd permutations like stubs, lineholes in and out, head pull, foot pull, head full face foot pull back, etc., etc. that would require creating many, many templates in inpo software (like Inpo2). The labor in creating all the permutations and then training the staff in exactly which template to use for which case would be very high. Also, we would invariably run into situations where there was a template we "forgot" to create.

Having templates in Illustrator with layers allows us to quickly create custom templates for whatever situation meets the clients needs.

Based on the input I'm getting here, I'm pretty convinced that exporting PDFs from Quark (using Distiller) and stripping my jobs in my Illustrator template is the best final answer.

Jim Y.

 

[pcmodem]

Whatever you do....DON'T use Illustrator for working with PDF's you will get bad results. Instead use InDesign. You can even copy and paste your Illustrator items into InDesign if you need to.

 

[jyarrow]

Funny, it's been working just fine for us so far

Funny, it's been working just fine for us so far

We've actually been using Illustrator to strip jobs (including PDF files as source) and it's been working flawlessly. Illustrator has been the only dependable part of our setup.

Jim Y.