Apogee screws up trapping on this file

[DCurry]

Anyone care to run this thru your Apogee flow to see how it traps?

If I leave unflattened, Apogee won't trap from the photo of the woman to the blue gradient bar. If I flatten the transparency first, Apogee will trap it fine.

[Joe]

Just for kicks I ran it through Prinergy and it does trap there. :wink:

[andyfest]

Ran it thru Nexus and it traps well. Agfa - ugh...

[DCurry]

Screw you, Joe - you're just trying to make me more jealouser!

J/K. I'm not surprised that Prinergy traps it correctly. I ran into a similar issue some time back and Prinergy handled it fine. Kinda frustrating, because I hate to use flattened PDFs. Kinda defeats the purpose of an APPE workflow.

[frailer]

     He's said the same thing to me on the odd XMF-processed file, if that helps.    :undecided:    I'll test when I get in in a couple of hours.

[DCurry]

Here is the response I got from Agfa:

We had a meeting with Adobe on this issue. Adobe confirmed us that they flatten before trapping so they do not understand why the issue occurs. They want us to test the issue with the next patch release of the APPE. So for the moment no status update can be given. However we wonder which other APPE version workflows you tested. As far as we know we are one of the few APPE workflows that uses APPE trapping. Workflows that use their own trapping solution outside of APPE will also have to flatten outside APPE (and before trapping) which might explain why they do not experience this problem.

[frailer]

AFAIK, XMF uses Adobe trapping, at least that's how I remember it. And today was crazy, so couldn't test, but shall tomorrow. (DownUnder time, that is   :cheesy: ) I thought the concept of 'flattening' was supposed to be passé now. I thought stuff got 'rendered' in APPE to the necessary file (1-bit TIFF?). Not how it is, by the sounds.

[DCurry]

I think the flattening occurs during the rendering. I know if I watch the progress messages as a file is processed, it will flash messages about trapping and flattening as the 1-bit data is generated.

Not sure how Nexus does it, but as far as Prinergy goes I know that the trapping occurs before any flattening, and that flattening only occurs as 1-bit data is generated.

[Joe]

I think the flattening occurs during the rendering. I know if I watch the progress messages as a file is processed, it will flash messages about trapping and flattening as the 1-bit data is generated.

Not sure how Nexus does it, but as far as Prinergy goes I know that the trapping occurs before any flattening, and that flattening only occurs as 1-bit data is generated.

Yes, I do not have Prinergy to flatten before output. You should still be able to see the transparency in the file I attached in my first post in this thread. Flattening is evil. I can't believe someone from Adobe would recommend flattening at that stage. It really sounds like either the AGFA person, the Adobe person...or both don't have a clue what they are talking about.

I don't think Nexus uses APPE. I know it didn't when I used it.

[DCurry]

I don't think Adobe is recommending flattening. They are just saying that the APPE trap engine will flatten first, then trap. When I told them that Prinergy and Nexus trap correctly their response was that Prinergy and Nexus both use their own trapping technology, not the APPE trap engine.

Apogee is a little different from Prinergy, Joe, in that when Prinergy refines and traps a file you end up with a refined and trapped PDF. There is no intermediate refined/trapped PDF stage in Apogee - the trapping occurs as the 1-bit screened data is generated. Makes it so I can't really "edit" a trap -- I can only influence zones, and if I don't like how a job traps I have to make the changes and re-render the entire form.

[Joe]

I don't think Adobe is recommending flattening. They are just saying that the APPE trap engine will flatten first, then trap. When I told them that Prinergy and Nexus trap correctly their response was that Prinergy and Nexus both use their own trapping technology, not the APPE trap engine.

Apogee is a little different from Prinergy, Joe, in that when Prinergy refines and traps a file you end up with a refined and trapped PDF. There is no intermediate refined/trapped PDF stage in Apogee - the trapping occurs as the 1-bit screened data is generated. Makes it so I can't really "edit" a trap -- I can only influence zones, and if I don't like how a job traps I have to make the changes and re-render the entire form.

So it sounds like your RIP is trying to trap, flatten, screen one-bit tiff but it should be flattening, trapping, and then screen to one-bit tiff. Can you change the order of the processes?

[DCurry]

Nope, can't change the order. I guess the only reassuring thing is that Agfa is in discussions with Adobe about this. It is an Adobe problem, since Agfa is using Adobe's trapping engine.

Even is Adobe fixes it in a future patch of the APPE, it won't really help me until I upgrade the rip, which isn't going to happen for a couple years at best.

[Joe]

So as a fix you are flattening in Acrobat before sending into Apogee? Uggggh....

[andyfest]

I believe Nexus uses Artpro to create both vector traps & transparent tif "slices" to make up the trapping in areas that use transparency (like the grad) and then exports a pdf.

[t-pat]

trapped artpro files make prinergy sad. And you can't untrap them if memory serves.