InDesign Help

[CES020]

Yes, me again! I'm TRYING to finish up a job here and I've hit a brick wall mentally.

I printed some product from Illustrator to our dye sub printer. The color, when pressed, is exactly what the customer wanted.

I just finished data merging a bunch of names and titles in Indesign. When I print it, the color comes out different, different enough to be no good. So I figure it's a profile setting issue. When I open my color settings in Illustrator and in InDesign, all the settings are the same, even in the advanced mode. What am I missing?

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Yes, me again! I'm TRYING to finish up a job here and I've hit a brick wall mentally.

I printed some product from Illustrator to our dye sub printer. The color, when pressed, is exactly what the customer wanted.

I just finished data merging a bunch of names and titles in Indesign. When I print it, the color comes out different, different enough to be no good. So I figure it's a profile setting issue. When I open my color settings in Illustrator and in InDesign, all the settings are the same, even in the advanced mode. What am I missing?

It might be the settings within the driver for the InDesign printer that are a little different.

 

[CES020]

Here's where I am. I have a Pantone color in there. Let's say "Pantone XYZ". I exported it as a high quality PDF, then opened that up in Illustrator. I have two files open in Illustrator, the original that I cut and pasted the artwork into InDesign, and then the PDF I just opened that came in from InDesign. So I can toggle between the two. The colors are clearly different. If I select the object, they both say the color is "Pantone XYZ". However, flipping between the two shows very different results. Both say "RGB/Preview" in the tab at the top.

Only difference I can see is when I'm in the original Illustrator file, on my color window, it shows 2 options, convert to spot and convert to LAB. If I go to the one opened as a PDF, it shows convert to spot and convert to CMYK.

I saved the PDF as an ai and opened it back up, went to the object, clicked it, went to my palette and picked the pantone color again and it's still a different color than on my original document.

I'm stumped. I'm checked all the working space profiles and I can't find a single thing that's different, yet they view very different. And the difference in the viewing is exactly the difference in my actual finished product too.

Any ideas?

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Let me ask you this, you said in the advanced color settings are the same, do you have preserve embedded profiles and preserve numbers?

 

[Bigdawg]

What machine are you printing to?

 

[CES020]

I'm printing to a dye sub printer, but the difference on the finished product is the same difference I see in the actual image on the screen. This is driving me insane.

If I have 2 files open, both have the same PMS color, why would one look about 3 shades darker than the other, all in Illustrator? What setting would cause that?

In the color settings, Color Management Policy, RGB is off (which is the way we were instructed to set it by the manufacturer) and CMYK is set to "Preserve embedded profiles".

Conversion Options is "Adobe (ACE)" set to "Perceptual" (again, settings given to us).

We've printed with this since we had it, no problem. And I still have no problem if I do it all from Illustrator. But it really does something wonky when I bring a file into Illustrator as the colors no longer match on the screen, even when they are the same color. Different files, same color, not talking about different color within one file.

 

[Rodi]

When you export the pdf from InDesign, make sure you do not convert the colors, there is an option in the export menu for that. Also make sure your illustrator doc is setup CMYK.

 

[CES020]

Here's a screen shot, it's on a fileshare because it loses too much quality when I upload it (something resizes my good photos to really poor ones here)....

https://www.filesanywhere.com/fs/v.aspx?v=8a6b638e5f6673b19fa8

The back file is the one that came in from a PDF. The front file is a native Illustrator file. The file is large, so if you view it at actual size, you might see something I am missing.

 

[Rodi]

Check the corrosponding LAB colors in the InDesign and Illustrator files for the Pantone Colors. You may need to switch them around.

 

[CES020]

Like I know what that means

Have I mentioned I'm an idiot lately?

I knew I should have done with in Word (only kidding, I don't own Word!).

 

[CES020]

Okay, I think we're on to something.

I couldn't match the "LAB" colors in Illustrator because I couldn't see any readings for it, but I did take the RGB (converted the pantone to RGB) values and take them into InDesign. The color is really close now, but I have one issue left. The print coming out of InDesign looks like it has lines in it, like it's a lower resolution.

When I print from Illustrator, it's smooth and solid and looks good. Printing from InDesign, it seems to have horizontal lines, like the resolution is lower. Any ideas what to look for there? My printer settings are all the same from both. I don't see any output settings for resolution out of InDesign.

 

[Rodi]

These are amongst the most esoteric and complex issues in print, and if anyone thinks that adobe has it locked up software wise, CES020s issue is proof they don't.

I'm not 100% sure how it works, but have you tried colorbridge as part of the CS suite? That may bring the colors into reconicilliation.
Why don't you save the final file as a PDF and see how that prints.

 

[CES020]

Okay, I think I got it nailed! I got the color looking right, and to get the horizontal stripes out, I found an option to convert it to a bitmap when printing, and I set that at 600dpi (which I know is overkill). It turned out great and the color is spot on the previous ones I had run from Illustrator. I'm happy now and running product! Wooo HOOOOO!

Thanks for the help. I'm not sure I could do it again, but it gets me through this hump and will get the job to the customer by the Monday due date.

Thanks!
Steve

 

[CES020]

I'm working on product this morning. For the life of me, I still cannot wrap my head around this workflow and how it's supposed to work, but that's for another discussion once this job is finished.

The issue I have now, and I'm fine with working around it, is that the data merge has words that are all capital. When I merge it, they are upper and lowercase. I've made the variable all uppercase, the actual data is all uppercase, but when it's merged, it's upper and lowercase. No big deal, easy enough to work around, but just curious on how to get them to stay all caps.

Any ideas?

Thanks-
Steve