Flexi 7.6 and large PDF file

[Stasch]

Hi, I am trying to print a 30" x 120" poster on a PDF file, created at 124 ppi using Photoshop from Adobe CS2. The file on disk is "Press Quality", about 150 Megs in size. Flexi will only accept the file if it is dragged and dropped in. After ripping the file we tried to send it our Roland Soljet Pro 2 printer, but the job failed.

Any suggestions? We are using a PC with windows XP, 30 Gig HD, 1 Gig memory.

Thanks!

 

[bob]

Flexi, at least 7.6, seems to be somewhat less than graceful when dealing with layers. This is especially true if you bring in a large PDF and then rotate it in the production manager. More often than not, a large rotated PDF will take forever to process and rip and finally end up giving you a rip error. Especially if it contains drop shadows. I can't offer a explanation, only some experience in these waters and lots of cursing. I have found if I orient the image properly for printing before I publish the PDF file, it works more often than not. This is coming out of Corel X3, but a PDF is supposed to be a PDF, an independent standard.

 

[cinemasign.grafix]

For 1 you seem to be pretty lean on Ram . What dose you system report as available? 2nd What version are exporting at ? Flexi has acceptable versions for import. Are you saving the file in a lower version than CS2? If not you should.

 

[Baz]

Double your ram and get a decent size hard drive. 30 gigs is just not enough. I can rip some files and they will eat up almost 10 gigs of hard drive space, once ripping is done, all that memory comes back. I'm amazed everytime at how much memory it takes to rip those huge files.

 

[thewood]

I would open the pdf up in Photoshop and save as a tif. Flexi will handle this much better.

 

[bob]

I would open the pdf up in Photoshop and save as a tif. Flexi will handle this much better.

While Flexi might be more accommodating to a TIF file, unfortunately TIF is a bitmap format file. PDF is a standard for packaging bitmap and vector information, among other things. That being the case, when to use TIF you loose acuity of vector objects, This information would be preserved in a PDF format. As long as you have vector information it's best to use a PDF if you can. If you can't, then you do whatever works best for your situation.

Sometimes you can get away with exporting everything as a bitmap. Sometimes you can't. It depends on the content. Just yesterday I had a layout of a 4x5 banner that refused to cooperate as a PDF. The problem I was having was with overlaid transparent bitmaps and drop shadows. Corel tends to have a rather bizarre interpretation of these sorts of things and seems to want to screw them up some. All I could do is convert the whole mess to a JPG. I could have just as easily done a TIF, dealer's choice and in this case it really didn't matter. It worked fine this time, tomorrow may be different.

 

[thewood]

While Flexi might be more accommodating to a TIF file, unfortunately TIF is a bitmap format file. PDF is a standard for packaging bitmap and vector information, among other things. That being the case, when to use TIF you loose acuity of vector objects, This information would be preserved in a PDF format. As long as you have vector information it's best to use a PDF if you can. If you can't, then you do whatever works best for your situation.

That's true, Bob. But this file is a Photoshop pdf, so it isn't a vector file to begin with. At least, that what I gathered from the initial posting.

 

[cinemasign.grafix]

File type aside. I think the hardware is severely lacking for current program demands and file handling. I have 4 rigs , the oldest is a Powerbook G4
1g ram & 40g HD. Mac is not nearly as demanding as Win. and i have not designed or Ripped on it in over a year. It's just way to slow. Not that it can't be done , it's just not efficient.

 

[Stasch]

Flexi, at least 7.6, seems to be somewhat less than graceful when dealing with layers. This is especially true if you bring in a large PDF and then rotate it in the production manager. .... This is coming out of Corel X3, but a PDF is supposed to be a PDF, an independent standard.

The PDF file was flattened -- I assumed that was the best way to hand it off to Flexi (?)

 

[Stasch]

For 1 you seem to be pretty lean on Ram . What dose you system report as available? 2nd What version are exporting at ? Flexi has acceptable versions for import. Are you saving the file in a lower version than CS2? If not you should.

There seems to be agreement that we have a pretty minimal setup as far as the computer goes---we are looking to upgrade. The PDF file was exported as a flattened file using "Press Quality". I do not recall seeing a warning about compatibility... Actually we had run a slightly smaller version of the poster a few weeks ago at the same "Press Quality" settings with no problems...

 

[Stasch]

Double your ram and get a decent size hard drive. 30 gigs is just not enough. I can rip some files and they will eat up almost 10 gigs of hard drive space, once ripping is done, all that memory comes back. I'm amazed everytime at how much memory it takes to rip those huge files.

When upgrading the hard drive, say to 200 Gigs, is it better to have two 100 Gig HDs so you can use the one that is not used by the operating system for scratch? Does anyone have any experience with one versus two HDs?

 

[Stasch]

I would open the pdf up in Photoshop and save as a tif. Flexi will handle this much better.

We tried this today and sure enough Flexi did seem happier with an uncompressed flattened tif file -- but it was late in the day and we did not have time to see if it was going to eventually go to the printer (we waited about 15 minutes). We will find out on Monday...

 

[Stasch]

While Flexi might be more accommodating to a TIF file, unfortunately TIF is a bitmap format file. PDF is a standard for packaging bitmap and vector information, among other things. That being the case, when to use TIF you loose acuity of vector objects, This information would be preserved in a PDF format. As long as you have vector information it's best to use a PDF if you can. If you can't, then you do whatever works best for your situation.

Sometimes you can get away with exporting everything as a bitmap. Sometimes you can't. It depends on the content. Just yesterday I had a layout of a 4x5 banner that refused to cooperate as a PDF. The problem I was having was with overlaid transparent bitmaps and drop shadows. Corel tends to have a rather bizarre interpretation of these sorts of things and seems to want to screw them up some. All I could do is convert the whole mess to a JPG. I could have just as easily done a TIF, dealer's choice and in this case it really didn't matter. It worked fine this time, tomorrow may be different.

We were using a flattened PDF file, so I assume there were no vector elements. Is there a consensus on which is better for Flexi, flattened or layered?

 

[Stasch]

That's true, Bob. But this file is a Photoshop pdf, so it isn't a vector file to begin with. At least, that what I gathered from the initial posting.

Since the PDF had been flattened I assume there were no vector elements. However the PDF file had been created in PhotoShop, and before flattening at least the type layers should have been vectored (like PostScript fonts). As long as you keep the type in unmerged layers you can repeatedly resize the poster without any degradation of the fonts, but rasterized graphics that have been pasted in will start to deteriorate. Too much resizing of flattened text can be a disaster...

Of course if you import a PDF file into PhotoShop that has not been prepared in Photoshop then it will need to be rasterized (at least that is my experience so far), and give you a flat file.

 

[Stasch]

File type aside. I think the hardware is severely lacking for current program demands and file handling. I have 4 rigs , the oldest is a Powerbook G4
1g ram & 40g HD. Mac is not nearly as demanding as Win. and i have not designed or Ripped on it in over a year. It's just way to slow. Not that it can't be done , it's just not efficient.

We agree and are in the process of upgrading. Do you have any experience with using a second disk for scratch?

 

[player]

Did you say you left your printer to print or not print the file? What if it screws up and leaves the heads exposed?

P

 

[Stasch]

Did you say you left your printer to print or not print the file? What if it screws up and leaves the heads exposed?

P

Good point. I left first, so will not know till Monday.

 

[Baz]

When upgrading the hard drive, say to 200 Gigs, is it better to have two 100 Gig HDs so you can use the one that is not used by the operating system for scratch? Does anyone have any experience with one versus two HDs?

I dont know of any advantages or disadvantage to doing that. My first rip pc was working with one partition while my rip pc now is split into two. I dont see any HD performance difference.

 

[iSign]

hard drives are cheap compared to your time being wasted on a regular basis.

Photoshop benefits from having a scratch disc. A 30 gig drive wastes space in my opinion, get at least one bigger drive, or get 2 bigger drives.

I would suggest a dedicated rip station. That computer would only run Flexi & rip jobs. It wouldn't need a scratch disc.

Having Photoshop's scratch disc assigned to a seperate physical drive, seems to be the preferred set-up I've always heard of, & what I do.

Having Photoshop reside on a seperate computer would allow you to be working on the next huge file, while printing from a different computer, & would give you the full resources of each machine to expedite each seperate task... without any risk that crunching a huge Photoshop could crash or lock-up a print job in the middle of a large expensive print.

 

[ChicagoGraphics]

Save your money and buy a "REAL RIP" you wont have any of the problems your having now with flexi. We use Onyx