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Shiraz, Gradients, JV-3 and In-Design
hey guys,
Wasnt sure where to put this.
For as long as I can remember I have never been able to print gradients or In-design PDF’s,
The majority of work gets sent to us by freelance designers, The problem is when ever we print an indesign PDF it just prints with errors, crops and shapes through.
We are mac based and I usually have to do something like open it up in preview and save as a Jpeg at about 400dpi (which just takes ages) and I’d rather not be printing Jpegs if I’m honest, As we have had problems with colour matches in the past.
I also have huge problems printing gradients in any format, I.e EPS, PDF’s etc.
I have spoken with AIT and they said that its an issue with In-Design that they cant print and suggested rasterizing my gradients, Which is a problem in its self as I said, most of the artwork is sent from designers etc and the fonts are never outlined.
Anyone else have these problems?
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16 Replies
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Yes we have the problems with gradients too.
Apparenty there is a plug-in due any day now, but it won’t be free.
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Why don’t you take the designs and export as tiffs. 400dpi seems high. Why this dpi?
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Thanks for the response Jon.
Who is the plug in from AIT?
What do you do to get around it at the mo?
Export them in What application Karl? We usually print at 400dpi just to cover ourselves really, We brand a lot of trailers and the artwork comes in at usually 25%
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I haven’t been able to get round it. Tried rasterising etc. I think the problem lies in the fact that Shiraz uses JAWS rather than Postscript.
What version of Shiraz do you have?
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We’re using 6.40 on a pc
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You’ve said you can export as a jpeg? Can’t you export as a Tiff from your software. Either that or get Coral x3 and photoshop. Shiraz prints great fades and photos mate so why not invest a bit more cash. Your rips wasted without it and you’ll always find you lose control over the job with a poor result.
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Karl.
Thanks for the reply, I have Photoshop, I just tried a tiff Hi res and still had colour and quality issues.
Teh problem I have with opening the file up in PS or illustrator is I dont have the fonts, Sometimes I can get away with placing the images in illustrator and flattening transparancy, Including outlining fonts, In some cases it just wont have it and asks for the fonts
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The lighter image is the PDf, The black lines show the difficulties handling the gradient.
The second & third is the Jpeg, You can see the difference in colour
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I have same problem, Mac user and saved as .pdf or .eps in Illustrator. Turn off color management in Illustrator helps somewhat, also bring into Photoshop and lens blur does a great job. I also use Flexi photo RIP se and it prints the gradients a little better but not great and the rest of the solid colors are not as nice as Shiraz. It seems to be the worse with reds going to blue or white to blacks.
Have the newest version of Shiraz and print to a Mutoh Valuejet. -
hi is that a cmyk jpeg and not an rgb one?
shiraz did have problems with gradients from the newer adobe stuff. did support run through switching the option ‘pure blend’ on in the profile options screen? where you click on something that opens up about 20 switches like ICC profiles switches.
Shiraz 6.40 i think was the last version written in the old code.
6.50 is the new software which also is rebadged as shiraz signature, a complete re-write of the rip software. -
We always had problems getting a decent fade out of Shiraz on a JV3. No customer ever complained, but we weren’t happy with them.
Changing to RasterLink Pro on a JV33 helped tremendously.
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Hey guys thanks for the response,
At least I’m not the only one having issues, Its just a pain having to keep calling up people asking for outlined artwork.
I’ve been on the phone to AIT, Asking about upgrading to 6.6, I asked if it would cover me for Indesign files and gradients.
They said they have kept up with Adobe as much as possible and I would need 6.6 and a plug in for CS4, I asked again if it would print gradients, only for the response, its up to date.
The outlay for 6.6 and the plug in is about £750, Its a fair whack for no real guarantee that it will print the perfect gradient.
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Richard shiraz 6.4 will print gradients if u read my post above.
They did have problems before that and also you got to remember that customers need to setup artwork correctly, saying that remembering to click the pure blend option is not a favourite of mine (although i think u can setup a default template)For instance a gradient from C0M0Y0K100 to C0M0Y0K1 would make a nice grey ramp but a gradient from Pantone Black to White will use other colours in the mix. Also if the colour is going from RGB black to white then hell breaks loose.
Sometimes converting that section to a bitmap is the only answer if you forgot.
I printed some very important artwork recently that was created in Adobe Illustrator PDF and had gradients, they printed fine once the settings have been applied.
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Dave,
Thanks for the reply, Sorry to be a pain, How do I access the pure blend in Shiraz?
Thanks in advance
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Richard,
If you are having problems with fonts when you open in illustrator (i.e. you dont have them), there are work arounds if you have acrobat pro, whereby you can convert text to curves. I have to do it all the time. Jason Xuareb on the boards here gave an explanation (do a search) – or see here:
http://orochiyamazaki.livejournal.com/129459.html
Think someone said Signlab may be able to do as well if you have.
Hope helps.
Martin
p.s. I am PC based – assume would work for your mac too if you have acrobat pro??
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Martin.
Many Thanks for this, I have often used this technique, On this instance it failed to read the font, However going over that, I never clicked the link file to import, This has worked a treat, (using the second option placing the image and outlining it)
Many thanks 😀
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