Problems in RasterLink 6 with PDF's

[PaPrinter]

I was wondering if anyone else was having problems in RasterLink where certain customer supplied PDF's had artifacts appear in the printed piece? They are typically squares with lines going through them. They will not show up on the screen with any program nor will they cause a problem with any other rip or printer we have. Mimaki's answer is to resave them in Photoshop, something we figured out ourselves. Problem is that doing this we turn a 1 meg file into a 21 meg or larger file, not good at all for processing time or production. We are printing on Mimaki JFX-200 flatbed. Any help or thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.

John

 

[oksigns]

This is seen by everyone as this has to do with how transparencies are "flattened" when producing a PDF

So, depending on how the file is built and sent to the printer, you can get away with an unflattened/native PDF file; however, if there are a lot of transparency effects like drop shadows or even blending modes, the artwork is chopped up in to chunks to accommodate the blending of these effects while trying to maintain the integrity of the file.

These whisper lines or boxes are a result. You are seeing how the PDF was constructed around these effects, and sometimes they are arbitrary based on masks even.

To truly flatten the file and prevent this, you need to turn it to a rasterized image at the appropriate resolution for printing. Depending on a file I am working on, for the final file, I will flatten/rasterize all elements that cause the issues with transparencies, and leave the text open and expanded(if I can) to maintain any vector art for clarity/quality.

 

[jsonpaul]

Same Here

This also happens to us in Raster Link 6 where we are printing a red gradient banner and all that came out is pixelated box and color is yellow. We re-open file in photoshop and adjust resolution to what is appropriate and resave it to flat TIFF and send to rasterlink. Works for us, as we always prefer to adjust the resolution to appropriate for application and save some RIP/processing time.

 

[ECVSoares]

Hi, I have a mimaki CJV-30, and I used Rasterlink... The prints started to come out bigger than the original files, for example: a job with 3000mm comes out with 3030mm...
Does anyone know what to do to fix it?

 

[DL Signs]

If you're getting artifacts, flatten and save PDF at size/ resolution before loading it into Rasterlink. If it still doesn't print correct save and send as an EPS. I print more EPS files than PDF, it handles gradients and effects better in Rasterlink, and stays editable, no extra flattened files to save.