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Illustrator Effects Problem

johnnysigns

johnnysigns

New Member
Background info: Mutoh Vjet / Onyx Productionhouse / CS4

When building print files w/ various effects I find that 3/4s of the time I'm getting problems when I RIP my files for output. Can anyone recommend transparency settings for digital ouputs?

More often than not I rasterize the files into .tifs when I have problems but it's just another step I'd like to avoid.

I'll list my setting shortly and I'm attaching a jpeg of what I generally see/get if I don't correct the problem and go to print.
 

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  • Transparency-Issue.jpg
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The Vector Doctor

The Vector Doctor

Chief Bezier Manipulator
Have you tried "flattening" and save this file as a separate one for print only? Once you flatten you cannot edit as easily. So you would have 2 versions of the file
 
petepaz

petepaz

New Member
try what the dr. said
i have had similar problems with versaworks for my roland machines
and usually if i flatten the the file it works but make sure you do save a print file and an edit file because also like the doc said you will not be able to edit or change some things after it is flattened
 
TheProfessor

TheProfessor

New Member
we have problems with our Seiko printing a light square around drop shadows that are printed directly from Illustrator... I usually just raster that stuff before I send it
 
S

signpro

Manager
yup, i have to Flatten as well before i send to versaworks. i save one non-flattened on my working computer in .ai format becuase the file is smaller and easier to edit, then i send the flattened EPS file over to my RIP machine. every few weeks i go through the RIP machine and delete all the old EPS files, once i know i don't need to rerun them. in the future, i can go back to the .ai file if needed again. just saves space.

sorry for the ramble... try flattening.
 
johnnysigns

johnnysigns

New Member
On this particular banner, I flattened the shadow w/ it set to a transparent background and it gave me a nice fat white rectangle around my shadow. I'm at a loss.

I was under the assumption that if i rasterize the file to a .tif I'm losing my tagged pantone colors for the rip to recognize.
 
rjpjr

rjpjr

New Member
Oh yea…the dreaded white box!

The RIP is seeing the contents of the file as two different color environments. Any place that an effect is generated, the RIP sees that area as an image and uses an Image/RGB profile. The remaining area is seen as vector/CMYK (assuming the Illustrator file is CMYK) or pantone and assigns a different profile to interpret that color space.

This is the method that I developed to get around the dual color space issue.

Draw a very small white box in a new layer above all other layers. Leaving the box selected, rasterize the white box. I apply a resolution of 10 using the “Other” resolution setting. With the rasterized box selected, change the transparency settings of the box from “Normal” to “Multiply”. Increase the size of the rasterized box large enough to completely cover the entire project. This will cause the RIP to see only one color space which in turn eliminates the faded white box like your .jpg displays. Now the file can be saved and better yet is still editable eliminating the need for duplicate or multiple files. The file size is larger, but that is a negative that I have accepted in order to keep file quantities at a minimum. This method has worked every time going on two years.

A Note…on larger projects such as multi panel wraps, etc., the Multiply box will need to applied to ALL panels or files, not just the areas with effects. If this is not done, the background color will not match.

Try it…hope it works for yea.

I’ll be eagerly watching this post to see if there are any other alternatives.
 
S

scott pagan

New Member
ripjr is on the right path, somewhat.

here are 2 steps i have found to be very effective for Onyx Postershop/ProductionHouse:

1. the problem is the RIP is seeing 2 different colorspace rendering intents for the illy effects, which are rasterized from original vector artwork. in my RIP (Onyx), i can choose to change the rendering intent of both raster (image) and vector (graphics) to be the same; in my case i choose for both to be "perceptual". this allows the RIP to process the file as one colorspace render.

2. another tip to watch out for is if you build CMYK graphics with spot color pallettes (i use Pantone coated). Onyx has a checkbox to "Use Color Table" to enhance or boost spot color replacement, so uncheck it to prevent the boost from areas outside the illy special effects areas (the lighter box you see around the effects). Or you can build the file w CMYK value colors, therefore Onyx will not try to adjust spot color fills to it's color table.

with these tips i can create my vector file with illy effects, and not have to rasterize or save extra copies at bloated file sizes.
 
signhere

signhere

New Member
we usually make a AI file in at 25% and open it in photoshop in which it is saved as a tiff file. we then open in flexi and of course enlarge at 400% for full size then go to print. I honestly like the approach "ripjr" has offered and will try it as well. I'm sure the file would be much smaller than our approach.
 
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ballardoutdoor

New Member
johnnysigns said:
On this particular banner, I flattened the shadow w/ it set to a transparent background and it gave me a nice fat white rectangle around my shadow. I'm at a loss.

I was under the assumption that if i rasterize the file to a .tif I'm losing my tagged pantone colors for the rip to recognize.
Click to expand...

Have you tried using gaussian blur(or stylize/drop shadow(AI Cs3) on the effects pallete, I had a client that loved dropshadows in his layouts but when it came time to RIP them that white box always was prevalent. We found there was a difference in RIP interpolation using the effects pallet dropshadow vs the Filter version of the drop shadow. using gaussian blur on vector objects to create shadow effects works as well.

Waldo Vega
Ballard Outdoor, Inc.
www.ballardoutdoor.com
 
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