PDF output headache

[bodger]

3 out of 16 images with problems on a short run b/w job (2 shown here)

customers black and white pdf pages have preflight issues as usual..RGB images ..  low resolution ... transparency etc...

normally send these jobs to a MPC7500 and output as finished booklet... all day every day  no probs....

PDF pages saved as .tif and made a3 spreads in Q8

output HD is 50% free - pdf/quark looked fine as usual on screen...

any ideas? don't want to spend hours on this.... ty

[Joe]

Looks like data corruption of some type. Was it that way in the original PDF? If so, there isn't much you can do except tell the person they have corrupt images in their PDF and to resupply them to you. Why are you saving the PDFs as tifs? You can convert the PDF's to grayscale in Acrobat and then place in Quark.

[bodger]

Thanks for the reply, I was hoping that someone might have had the problem before and could give a likely cause...

With regard to the pdf conversion ... well I find that Q8 & Acrobat are a bit flakey and my forum name might give you a clue as to my work methods...Occasional crashes when positioning in Q8.. it's less painful to just click save as tiff..... :grin:

Also, from time to time I get weird "word-pdf" documents where the client version of Times/Times New Roman don't work (using local fonts doesn't cure either) because they It/bd/itbd text instead of changing font... so I usually out of the goodness of my heart try a tiff (sometimes it solves problem) before sending the crap back.. I have two clients who are not allowed to use Times any more as they didn't pay attention the first time they were told... Am I too grumpy? should I spend hours trying to find the educated answer? or is it fair to blame Microsoft as usual?

[frailer]

... Am I too grumpy?

No, just a perfect fit for b4p sign-up.    :laugh:

[Joe]

Well the data corruption can occur, for example, if you are saving across the network to a network share and you have a network hiccup that occurs while the save is in progress. Adobe and Quark both recommend working from a local drive and then copying to the network though anyone rarely pays attention to that with reliable gigabit networks these days. Also if you are working from the local drive there could be a problem with it and the file is getting saved to a bad sector on the hard drive. Or even a spike occurs during the save. It's not a usual problem though and usually indicates something wrong elsewhere besides the file or the software application being used. Does this happen a lot with your files? And is that corruption only in the tiff after being saved? If it is only in the tiff I would try saving to the local HD rather than saving across the network or if you are already saving to a local drive I would try a different computer to do the conversion/save to tif just to rule that computer in or out of the equation.

I certainly wasn't trying to offend by questioning using tiffs but opening a PDF in Photoshop and rasterizing as a tiff is usually the last resort. Personally, I would open it in Acrobat and save it as an EPS and then place that in Quark before I would rasterize the whole file as a tiff. The benefit is that you'll still have high resolution text. But to each his own.

[bodger]

Well this fault was unusual for me... and I wonder about all the preflight messages ( normally only preflight this mono work If I see a problem as I check on screen then print a proof...quick and easy)  so transparency issues, ICC issues, low res image or too hi res images,  disc writing space, RGB images, don't identify a corrupt image really.. I must admit that I thought a transmission spike/error would seem a favourite but, it happened on pdf print direct, and also on the tiffs... (btw for this sort of work the PDF 'save as' Tiff option gives me acceptable images without having to go via PShop.. Obviously I work differently for 4col process jobs.

what interests me is that these 'faults' (vertical lines) are within rectangular shaped sections of the image and not random, really seems like some sort of transparent overlay or fault....

As i said I don't want to spend hours on this, just wanted to try and understand what I might do in future.  Let's hope it's a one-off... 

[Joe]

Good point about the rectangular shaped sections. If there is transparency Acrobat would have to flatten while saving. What version of Acrobat are you using? If you say 8 I'm going to blame it. It sucked mightily compared to 7, 9, or X. :laugh:

[bodger]

i always try and run a bit behind other folks, so that the fixes are available.  I got fed up many moons ago of new software that was riddled with problems and wasted my time.. so I am on Acrobat 7, and Quark 8 (because I had to) !, etc etc...
I really was happiest on OS 6.7 et al... 

[StudioMonkey]

I've seen this before - it is file corruption.  If this is what your customer's PDFs looked like when you got them, they need to resend.  They will probably just send the same files again.  If its a transmission error, you should be OK, but if the corruption is on their files you will have the same problem.  You will need to ask them for source files and rebuild. 

[bodger]

Unfortunately I might not be able to convince the client that it's their fault, I know that that is unacceptable as it always has to be their fault and I'm letting us all down.... the pdf looks fine, no problems and the images stripped from the document and opened in photoshop don't have any obvious problems, except that they are black and white with RGB format.

My priority is to either get an answer or make it go away and not waste any more time.... I like the idea of someone at some time having embedded some sort of transparency box in the image before it got to the client that causes a corruption that you can't find. If this works then it is their fault for not using verified images?  Coupled with random acts of RGB incompatibility might just swing it my way?

That is the case for the defence!  :rolleyes:

[StudioMonkey]

If you can strip out a good copy of the images then use those to rebuild the documents.  Place the pics in ID or whatever and reset the text over them.

[bodger]

 :embarrassed: umm.. solving the problem would have been easy but umm... not sure how to say this.. deep breath... I ran the job and probably saw no error on the first print as I wasn't particularly looking at the images  :embarrassed:

the work was delivered and all the distributors delivered the 1000 copies...


Thanks people, you've helped me decide...It really looks like this is a transmission problem and I hadn't checked properly... how can this happen to someone who is never wrong and is practically perfect in every way  :shocked:

[Joe]

I don't think it is a transmission problem. You received the PDFs and they were fine right, so the transmission was successful? I think it is some kind of corruption created during the flattening process during the conversion. And seeing how you are using an older version of Acrobat (7) I'm betting it does not understand the transparency used in file.

[bodger]

you would say that now!!.. I'd just convinced myself it was a mixture of missing matadata/rgb images whatever and disc error sending the job down...(i.e the error occured on a part that was already suspect/flakey) - I've just had an offer from a software company to analyse the pages so we might yet get a result! 

[Joe]

You opened the PDF in Acrobat 7 and exported as a tiff, right? Corruption was not in the original PDF but it was in the tiff? Or did the corruption occur after you placed the tiff into Quark and output? How are you outputting from Quark? Printing to a device or making a new PDF?