Neo and a flaky PDF file

[EmptyWords]

Had a flaky pdf file submitted for print this past week, the job had 5 four color sigs and around 10 black sigs, they had a few images as cmyk mixed in with the grays on the black sigs and some cmyk gray pics on a few of the four color sigs. So I kick the job out, told the salesman to get the InDesign CS2 file from the client and we could fix all in about 15 mins. Of course the client refused to send in the native files and wanted us to fix the problems in the pdf.

So, now it's back to me and I have to figure out how much time to fix all the problems in the pdf file, I come up with a figure, they contact the client and of course they balk at the time and price and refuse to pay for the extra plates to run as is. They "proceed to fix the file themselves"  they did fix the images for the most part, only had a few left as cmyk gray images, but the new pdf file they sent in now had the text separate out as four color, strange I thought, since the first time was all right, the text came out as black.

This gets me to my issue (sorry for going on and on) I then open up the pdf file in Neo 1.2.2 and check the text & line fills, all the the black sigs came in as having cmyk color resources, so I select both some text and also a few lines, the fill colors showed as k.o. for C, k.o. for M, k.o. for Y and 100 for K, I have never seen this ever in any of the pdf files submitted to us, I took a screen cap of a sample of the text in Neo.

Anybody ever seen this before in a submitted pdf file???? And, if so, what did your client do to get it to screw up in this way.

Yes, I did check if the text was set as registration and also a rich black, the file text used the default black in InDesign CS2, that is what the client is tell us.

[almaink]

I think your worrying about something thats not an issue. Process black and grayscale black will both come out on the black plate. Sometimes people just use process black and other times it's text that was either imported or images that use the grayscale black.

[EmptyWords]

But when ripped the text came out as 4 color and not 100% K, it turned to a rich black, after fixing the type with Neo to 100K only, the file ripped correctly.

[DigitalCrapShoveler]

Had a flaky pdf file submitted for print this past week, the job had 5 four color sigs and around 10 black sigs, they had a few images as cmyk mixed in with the grays on the black sigs and some cmyk gray pics on a few of the four color sigs. So I kick the job out, told the salesman to get the InDesign CS2 file from the client and we could fix all in about 15 mins. Of course the client refused to send in the native files and wanted us to fix the problems in the pdf.

So, now it's back to me and I have to figure out how much time to fix all the problems in the pdf file, I come up with a figure, they contact the client and of course they balk at the time and price and refuse to pay for the extra plates to run as is. They "proceed to fix the file themselves"  they did fix the images for the most part, only had a few left as cmyk gray images, but the new pdf file they sent in now had the text separate out as four color, strange I thought, since the first time was all right, the text came out as black.

This gets me to my issue (sorry for going on and on) I then open up the pdf file in Neo 1.2.2 and check the text & line fills, all the the black sigs came in as having cmyk color resources, so I select both some text and also a few lines, the fill colors showed as k.o. for C, k.o. for M, k.o. for Y and 100 for K, I have never seen this ever in any of the pdf files submitted to us, I took a screen cap of a sample of the text in Neo.

Anybody ever seen this before in a submitted pdf file???? And, if so, what did your client do to get it to screw up in this way.

Yes, I did check if the text was set as registration and also a rich black, the file text used the default black in InDesign CS2, that is what the client is tell us.

Check you ID prefs. There is one called Handling of Black. Make sure you switch the default from Output and Display Rich Blacks to Output and Display blacks Accurately. Could it be?

[Joe]

Check the PDF for embedded ICC profiles. I've seen that do this before. If that's not it then I'm not sure. Could you put up a single page of the PDF we can look at?

[EmptyWords]

Check you ID prefs. There is one called Handling of Black. Make sure you switch the default from Output and Display Rich Blacks to Output and Display blacks Accurately. Could it be?

We don't have the original ID file, they refuse to let us use/see it. So I am just really scratching my head as to what would give a K.O. for CMY and 100 for the K reading in Neo

[EmptyWords]

Check the PDF for embedded ICC profiles. I've seen that do this before. If that's not it then I'm not sure. Could you put up a single page of the PDF we can look at?

Joe,
After your response I decided to open the file in Pitstop on our Ody Server, this is what it's listing the text as, see screen cap attachment.

[Joe]

Yep, I think that it is it. If you run the "Remove ICC Profiles" action from Pitstop I think it will fix it. Not sure but you also might be able to fix it in NEO but not at work right now to find out. NEO does not have action lists but you might be able to change it with a profile.

[whoami]

What rip did you run it through?  did you apply any device links to the file when it was ripped.?  Maybe it was something in the device link that is set to preserve black only and since it saw a value for CMY it threw some other colors in there.  Probably not it but it seemed like a possibility.  i'm not an expert but here a nice little tip that worked for me when changing k.o to 0.  i noticed you have the overprint button checked on so all you would do is check it off and check it back on and the k.o. changes to 0.  Well hopefully you figure this stuff out. 

[EmptyWords]

Yep, I think that it is it. If you run the "Remove ICC Profiles" action from Pitstop I think it will fix it. Not sure but you also might be able to fix it in NEO but not at work right now to find out. NEO does not have action lists but you might be able to change it with a profile.

Yea, I changed the value in Neo back to 100K only and when I reopened the file it displayed correctly, just never saw the k.o. in the CMY fields before for a black job.

[EmptyWords]

What rip did you run it through?  did you apply any device links to the file when it was ripped.?  Maybe it was something in the device link that is set to preserve black only and since it saw a value for CMY it threw some other colors in there.  Probably not it but it seemed like a possibility.  i'm not an expert but here a nice little tip that worked for me when changing k.o to 0.  i noticed you have the overprint button checked on so all you would do is check it off and check it back on and the k.o. changes to 0.  Well hopefully you figure this stuff out. 

Damn, wish I knew that before hand, I re-entered the correct values in the fill pallet for each page. We ran it through our Nexus 8.4.4 rip. No, we didn't have any device links applied. At least I am starting to figure out some of the problem, just can't figure out exactly what they did to have it show up as k.o.

[whoami]

Well too bad they don't want to give you the application files.  then you would be able to export it a bunch of different ways to see if the export settings were the issues.

[EmptyWords]

Well too bad they don't want to give you the application files.  then you would be able to export it a bunch of different ways to see if the export settings were the issues.

I think it may have something to do with how they exported the file to pdf, specifically with the color conversion/convert to destination, I was following the thread that Joe started the other day (InDesign question) where he had the NChannel thing going on, which for the most part I had too with my file, the file they supplied had a mix of Nchannel and Gray, but they also talked about how the settings there seem to dictate some of the strange outcomes, like the k.o. in the cmy channels and the Nchannel for gray.