Printing issues

[My Strawberry Monkey]

Hi,

 

So I'm in the process of working on a book and have the proofs back. There are a couple of things that I wasn't happy with or understood. 

 

A white line appears around some of the images and the response from the printer was that it was due to 'trapping' in the PDF. Now the export is fine as far as I can see and the issue is not there or in the design, he does make a point though that it does not appear on every page.

 

 

The other issue is around these grey circles (grey specs), their response was 'trying to capture a sharp mix of grey tints from the artwork supplied' has limitations and again it does not appear anywhere else.

 

 

 

Does anyone have an explanation or solution? I'm exporting as PDF/X 2003 

 

Thanks,

 

Allan

[MikeW]

The trapping issue could be due to how the image is created--has the background around the monkey been subtracted so as to create a "kiss-fit"? Is the print service relying on trapping being included in the PDF? This would be highly unlikely, but I have seen it before.

 

For the artifacts around the gray circles, it could be due to the flattening (there is no transparency in a PDF/X-3 PDF). But it looks like a resolution and flattening issue in order to scatter the pixels to cause the artifacts. Are they vector circles? Are they flattened to bitmaps in the PDF?

 

Does this happen on your local printer if printing from the same PDF as you gave the print service? Are you creating a PDf using the same PDF profile they are using?

 

Mike

[MikeW]

In looking at the monkey issue again, it really looks like mis-registration. The areas at the top of the monkey's body parts show the issue.

 

Who is doing the printing?

[My Strawberry Monkey]

Hi Mike,

 

Not sure what you mean by kiss fit, it's just a blue square background with the monkey on top. Not sure they're relying on it, I'm sure they would have mentioned that to me.

 

What is misregistration? Not using a printer to test this myself, and they have not mentioned a particular profile to me. It's odd as there are other pages where it is fine.

 

 

 

 

As for the circles yes they are vector, the whole book is. I'm rasterizing on export, but again it's not happening elsewhere in the book.

The print is being done by a company called Cloc Print.

[MikeW]

A kiss-fit is what happens when edges are abutted, but not overlapping. So, for instance, if you subtracted a circle from a rectangle, the edges would meet but the circle would not be actually on top of the rectangle, it would be fitting withing a cut-out in the rectangle. That can cause the same/similar issue.

 

Thanks for the business name. They have no real information on their web site as regards the printing technology other than they are printing digitally. And no information as to the PDF color profile they are using. You would need to ask what color profile, but as it is in the UK I would suspect one of two FOGRA profiles.

 

They are likely using high-speed digital printers to print the smaller work like yours. Even using different technology, pages stretch (grow in length) during a print run, which may be comprised of more than a single job depending upon what sheet size they are using.

 

Registration issues are often the cause of the plates being misaligned--but that issue depends on the type of presses they are using. This can happen when the job is first put to the press or during printing as everything heats up. But registration issues are different than trapping issues.

 

Because your last two images look fine, is there a similar colored background that it occurs on? Like I asked above, is the blue background that shows the issue a pure or near pure Cyan and is this color (or any other near pure CMYK color) used behind the images where this issue shows up?

[My Strawberry Monkey]

Ok, that makes sense. Not in that situation, it is a page with a cyan background and the rest of the characters on the page.

 

Yeah, not much detail on their site at all. I will check with them regarding the profile, but other than the issues mentioned the rest has come out ok.

 

Thanks for the info, and hence the reason why the think it's a problem on my end as it only occurs on the odd page. 

It's strange as the covers are dark blue and cyan (2 books) they have gloss lamination applied and can't see the issue, as for the pages it appears only appear on the cyan and into the green, any darker on the blue and it's ok and so is the yellow, purple, black etc backgrounds.

 

I can't change the backgrounds as they represent the sky and it works for the cover so I'm at a loss at how to fix this. The other images on the page are ok, it's mainly the pink monkey, is there something with pink and cyan when printing? as digitally it's perfect and so is the PDF.

 

Forgive the poor image quality, it's dark, zoomed in and a photo from the book. It's the last two the green and blue where it is noticeable.

 

[MikeW]

I would not know for certain without seeing the PDF that generated those prints. What I would be looking for is the color builds of the two adjoining colors where this occurs. Too hard of transition from one CMYK primary to a CMYK build that has very little of the strong primary can contribute to a mis-registration, but not to trapping per se.

 

There is an exception to the above that may explain the cover. Black is nearly always over-printed and is usually the last ink laid down on a press. (The K in CMYK isn't specifically the black color. The K stands for Key but is nearly always the black ink.) As well, likely the cover is a rich black (not 100%K) and so as it would have CMY inks also, the CMY colors blend into the Cyan and with the black overprinting, there would be no hard edge to trap or mis-register.

 

Thing is, trapping and registration are issues generally out of your hands in all but a few software packages. Even if you had software that can apply a trap to the PDF at generation, the printing company, depending upon its print technology is in full control. So even if this trapping was applied to your PDF, the software this company uses may either not honor it, it may strip it, or it may not even recognize the trap information in the PDF.

 

A RIP either needs to have the ability to trap (and adjust those traps) or honor the trap from a PDF. Most print services do not honor trapping in PDFs as they have fine-tuned the traps for their RIPs and work-flow.

[anon1]

Isn´t it an option to set the monkey to overprint, (at the cost of a color shift of the monkey which you would have to compensate for in advance)?

 

or maybe you can adapt your design so that the monkey is separated by a white border ...but I assume that would pretty much break the integrity of the design

 

My opinion though is:

most clients will probably not notice the issue at all and you´ll be just fine and delight many people with your illustration....

[MikeW]

The color of the monkey will change if set to overprint and it would be different in each instance depending upon the background color.

[My Strawberry Monkey]

I would not know for certain without seeing the PDF that generated those prints. What I would be looking for is the color builds of the two adjoining colors where this occurs. Too hard of transition from one CMYK primary to a CMYK build that has very little of the strong primary can contribute to a mis-registration, but not to trapping per se.

 

There is an exception to the above that may explain the cover. Black is nearly always over-printed and is usually the last ink laid down on a press. (The K in CMYK isn't specifically the black color. The K stands for Key but is nearly always the black ink.) As well, likely the cover is a rich black (not 100%K) and so as it would have CMY inks also, the CMY colors blend into the Cyan and with the black overprinting, there would be no hard edge to trap or mis-register.

 

Thing is, trapping and registration are issues generally out of your hands in all but a few software packages. Even if you had software that can apply a trap to the PDF at generation, the printing company, depending upon its print technology is in full control. So even if this trapping was applied to your PDF, the software this company uses may either not honor it, it may strip it, or it may not even recognize the trap information in the PDF.

 

A RIP either needs to have the ability to trap (and adjust those traps) or honor the trap from a PDF. Most print services do not honor trapping in PDFs as they have fine-tuned the traps for their RIPs and work-flow.

Thanks Mike. Yeah I agee their response is that it's not appearing on every page. From my perspective the design in AD is fine and so is the export. So both me and the printers are not sure where this is occurring. Might chage some of the backgrounds to see if that fixes some of it.

[My Strawberry Monkey]

Isn´t it an option to set the monkey to overprint, (at the cost of a color shift of the monkey which you would have to compensate for in advance)?

 

or maybe you can adapt your design so that the monkey is separated by a white border ...but I assume that would pretty much break the integrity of the design

 

My opinion though is:

most clients will probably not notice the issue at all and you´ll be just fine and delight many people with your illustration....

 

Thanks. Yeah not looking to change what I've done but might experiment with different backgrounds.

 

Hopefully, it's my own thing so I'm my own client, which isn't always a good thing and I want it be as good as it can get. Things like this will continue to bug me. The rest of the book I'm happy with though.