Transparencies again. How do you guys deal with them?

Started by AaronH, April 25, 2018, 05:30:56 PM

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AaronH

Hey everyone. So lately I've been getting a ton of jobs in with transparencies, typically black set to overprint or multiply usually and I'm getting darn near 400% ink. I've had some luck dropping large shapes to OP0 from 0P1 and an action to covert images to SRGB then to CMYK to get 300% ink but there are some jobs that either of these just don't fix the problems. I've got Acrobat DC and Pitstop 12.3. I just feel like this is something I should have been trained on years ago, but wasn't. Anywho, I've got 14 24-page magazines I have to manually fix but it get's scary when you're trying to get things to be consistent across multiple pages.

How do you guys handle these issues?

I know this is similar to my last couple forum posts, but I didn't want to pull up old threads.

Thanks,
Aaron
Mac & Windows | XMF | Fiery | Oris

Joe

If you could upgrade to Pitstop 2018 it ships with device link profiles for this issue.[attach width=400]18580[/attach]
Mac OS Sonoma 14.2.1 (c) | (retired)

The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.

AaronH

Thanks Joe, I'll have to take a look at that. I might need to download a trial and see how it handles the transparent objects.
Mac & Windows | XMF | Fiery | Oris

AaronH

So I checked my co-workers iMac and he has 2018 Pitstop. No idea why I can't get an upgrade and tried both a device link conversion to a 300% TAC conversion and then a 300% TAC reduction action list and neither of them did anything to transparent objects. Am I doing something wrong?
Mac & Windows | XMF | Fiery | Oris

Joe

Do you mean that it didn't reduce the TAC to 300% in transparent objects. Do you by chance have an example file?
Mac OS Sonoma 14.2.1 (c) | (retired)

The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.

abc

Some things to know. The devicelinks only work on DeviceCMYK objects. So if the images are RGB or are tagged with an ICC Profile then they will not be touched.

Also if the excessive TAC is caused by images that are multiplied together and the combined result is over TAC, then you will need to flatten first in order for the ink coverage to be reduced.


DigiCorn

Once I found this (see screenshot), it pretty much fixed everything for us digitally (we really don't do offset anymore - we have to send it out).
"There's been a lot of research recently on how hard it is to dislodge an impression once it's been implanted in someone's mind. (This is why political attack ads don't have to be true to be effective. The other side can point out their inaccuracies, but the voter's mind privileges the memory of the original accusation, which was juicier than any counterargument ever could be.)"
― Johnny Carson

"Selling my soul would be a lot easier if I could just find it."
– Nikki Sixx

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."
― Ernest Hemingway

Joe

Mac OS Sonoma 14.2.1 (c) | (retired)

The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.

DigiCorn

If I don't do that to the customer supplied pdf, I get darkened boxes around all the transparencies and shadow effects.
"There's been a lot of research recently on how hard it is to dislodge an impression once it's been implanted in someone's mind. (This is why political attack ads don't have to be true to be effective. The other side can point out their inaccuracies, but the voter's mind privileges the memory of the original accusation, which was juicier than any counterargument ever could be.)"
― Johnny Carson

"Selling my soul would be a lot easier if I could just find it."
– Nikki Sixx

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."
― Ernest Hemingway

abc

Ok so something to think about.
When you flatten in an application, what happens is all the text, graphics, images, shadings, softmasks, color etc all have to be taken into consideration. At the end of the day you are getting a flattened object based PDF file.

When you flatten in your output rip, you are not technically flattening.
What you are doing is taken an object based PDF with transparency and then rendering it to a set of bitmaps for your rip or DFE.
Much easier and much more reliable.

If you are getting white boxes on output then either your rip does not support transparency, or it's not configured correctly.

DigiCorn

We don't technically have a RIP. Everything is digital, and goes through Command WorkStation.
"There's been a lot of research recently on how hard it is to dislodge an impression once it's been implanted in someone's mind. (This is why political attack ads don't have to be true to be effective. The other side can point out their inaccuracies, but the voter's mind privileges the memory of the original accusation, which was juicier than any counterargument ever could be.)"
― Johnny Carson

"Selling my soul would be a lot easier if I could just find it."
– Nikki Sixx

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."
― Ernest Hemingway

Ear

Sure you do. All printers have a RIP of some sort. Photoshop is a RIP, for that matter. Gotta process that stuff to raster at some point, before it can be plotted as an image. Your Command workstation is flattening and rendering for its self, and probably has very little need for all of the offset bells and whistles.

Like others here state, I use PitStop. In my CTP RIP, I use embedded Enfocus actions, to handle things like the total ink density problem, etc...

And ABC is correct, bad output is from poor settings. For my Sierra RIP, PDF 1.7 and the transparency will behave all day long. My Fiery to Digital is much less picky.
"... profile says he's a seven-foot tall ex-basketball pro, Hindu guru drag queen alien." ~Jet Black

AaronH

Thanks guys. That gives me some things to try. I've tried flattening with the Flattener Preview in the Print Production toolset in Acrobat DC but it usually does funny things so the Prepress Fixup looks interesting. I wish we had a GCR profile for our XMF rip, but those are expensive. From my understanding, if we had that, I wouldn't need to ask about this.
Mac & Windows | XMF | Fiery | Oris

DigiCorn

Flattener preview gives me the boxes also (just like Fiery/CWS). The prepress fixup is the one that works for us.
"There's been a lot of research recently on how hard it is to dislodge an impression once it's been implanted in someone's mind. (This is why political attack ads don't have to be true to be effective. The other side can point out their inaccuracies, but the voter's mind privileges the memory of the original accusation, which was juicier than any counterargument ever could be.)"
― Johnny Carson

"Selling my soul would be a lot easier if I could just find it."
– Nikki Sixx

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."
― Ernest Hemingway

AaronH

Quote from: DigiCorn on April 26, 2018, 10:46:04 AMFlattener preview gives me the boxes also (just like Fiery/CWS). The prepress fixup is the one that works for us.

That fixup worked perfectly DigiCorn. You're amazing!
Mac & Windows | XMF | Fiery | Oris