Distiller Question

[jezza]

Postscript made out of Quark 6.1 (Don't ask) QX out put 600 dpi. PS dropped on to Distiller 6 at standard Press Quality settings, so compression is set for images above 450 down to 300. All the images in the job are 300dpi, scaled down, so effective res is up but no down sampling should happen Right?

Job comes back and the edges of the image (eps with clipping path) where they but up to solid look a bit jagged.

On phone to printer and he says to switch down sampling off, even though we're not downsampling are we...

Supposedly it generates a bigger pdf, but solves the problem. A problem I've never encountered before. Not had chance to check this out as it was late and I wanted out. Any ideas, or am I being a feeb today?

Just as an after thought I asked the printer to send me his distiller settings, he sent me a screen grab of them...

[Joe]

Postscript made out of Quark 6.1 (Don't ask) QX out put 600 dpi. PS dropped on to Distiller 6 at standard Press Quality settings, so compression is set for images above 450 down to 300. All the images in the job are 300dpi, scaled down, so effective res is up but no down sampling should happen Right?

Job comes back and the edges of the image (eps with clipping path) where they but up to solid look a bit jagged.

On phone to printer and he says to switch down sampling off, even though we're not downsampling are we...

Supposedly it generates a bigger pdf, but solves the problem. A problem I've never encountered before. Not had chance to check this out as it was late and I wanted out. Any ideas, or am I being a feeb today?

Just as an after thought I asked the printer to send me his distiller settings, he sent me a screen grab of them...

Doesn't seem like it should. What does Pitstop show as the resolution of the images?

[jezza]

No pit stop Dude is adamant that it makes a difference

[Joe]

Okay, what if you open the image into Photoshop from Acrobat? What resolution does Photoshop say it is? If it is still 300 dpi than it isn't downsampling. Not sure what else it could be though.

[jezza]

Yeah I thought of that, er, on the train home, I'll check it out tomorrow

[DCurry]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here, but if you are outputting the images at 600 from Quark, then yes it will downsample in Distiller because it it above 450.

[jezza]

That's the printer res, sorry no being clear

[jezza]

So I opened the images in photoshop and this is what I got

PS file 114.5 Mb

Standard Press ready settings PDF 316kb. Image in Photoshop 300.173 dpi, 1027 x 782 pixels

Standard Press ready all compression off PDF 1.6Mb. Image in Photoshop 857.143 dpi, 2933 x 2233 pixels

So notionally better quality (more dots) and then he's putting it through a trueflow. Too tired on a Friday night to work it out when there's beer in the fridge.

[EyeTech]

Aha! So it's not just me then!

We intermittently get this issue - only way to resolve is to 'keep resolution'. Which kinda defeats the object (insofar as PDFs are usually much more compact in filesize)

What were your zip settings (auto down or subsample etc)?

[jezza]

I was beginning to think it was just me!

Usually leave the images set to Maximum Quality, but doesn't make sense to me

[EyeTech]

Are the images showing pixellation or just the clip path?

Is the clip path PShop or lazy way thru' QXP?

[jezza]

A 'rough edge' where the 4 colour images but up to a 'solid' that's actually 100m, 100y. The clipping is Photoshop. We do get a significantly better result with compression switched off.

[EyeTech]

What's the flatness setting for the clip path?

[jezza]

1 devise pixels, the picture is a can of paint, so it's a very simple path, a little detail round the lid, but basically two straight lines and two curves!