I work at a print shop that uses an HP Indigo 7600 press with all of their RIP engines and software.
Every once in awhile, I get flattened pdf files that are huge and although the RIPs can handle them, it slows them down and printing is extremely slow. When we have to add variables to these big files, they obviously become insane.
What do you do for this kind of problem? The only thing I've found that works without losing *too much* quality, is to convert to jpegs and re-compose that way before sending to RIPs. Files are still large, but not as bad and they move faster.
Pop quiz? ... shoot the hostage.
You may want to not have your email as your username.
Well, unless you love spam.
Tons and tons of spam.
I can't weigh in on the RIP problem though. I have a PDF RIP here so transparency stays live.
... and converting anything to a jpeg, prior to sending to a RIP is a bad idea, in terms of quality. Ask gewgle about "lossy image compression" and "jpeg artifact".
Quote from: Farabomb on May 05, 2016, 10:57:35 AMYou may want to not have your email as your username.
Well, unless you love spam.
Tons and tons of spam.
I can't weigh in on the RIP problem though. I have a PDF RIP here so transparency stays live.
I can't change the profile name and I'm too lazy to make a new account...it's an old email that I don't really use anymore so meh. Thanks for looking out, though! :)
Quote from: Ear on May 05, 2016, 11:07:25 AM... and converting anything to a jpeg, prior to sending to a RIP is a bad idea, in terms of quality. Ask gewgle about "lossy image compression" and "jpeg artifact".
Yeah...I don't like doing it but returning files and requesting them to be cleaner/smaller with the customer base we have is not an option. Converting to jpegs has been the last resort short of asking for ALL the native files (again, with our customer base this somehow becomes a stressful and confusing process, if even possible) and reworking the entire thing myself, but when there's 10+ pages and 2-8 versions...and only 1 person in graphics (myself) I'd about rather shoot myself in the face. :shoots_self:
Crap in, crap out...but then of course the owners are fine with that warning until someone comes back asking what happened. Even though the proof was approved. Even with the above preflight comments. -.-
Hi there,
As the others have said, rasterizing helps but is not ideal. And in your case, I don't think you can easily upgrade hardware. Do you happen to have some example files you could provide? I like to provide problem files to my developers so they have samples for future feature requests. You're not the only printer that has this problem, especially as files become more and more complex.
Greg
Once they are flattened it is game over. You can try using the Acrobat Optimizer which might help a little bit. But short of shooting the person doing the flattening there isn't much that can be done.
Not sure if your Indigo has it, but background form is a handy feature, then it RIPs the background once and keeps it while adding the data layer over top for each sheet.
If it doesn't have it, you can run 2 passes through the press, which isn't always welcomed by the operator.
If the variable interacts with the background, my ideas go out the window.
yeah, it's a problem when we can't go back to the customer
good idea Born!
I don't really see the problem with giant, messy files. They take a little longer but they make me feel pretty special. Like "that was a big turd and I polished the shit right out of it"
Quote from: born2print on May 05, 2016, 11:51:24 AMNot sure if your Indigo has it, but background form is a handy feature, then it RIPs the background once and keeps it while adding the data layer over top for each sheet.
This is the way to do it if your software and RIP support it.