Need Help Software Help VersaWorks gradient changes from red/yellow to green/black???

Roland XC-540 on VersaWorks 5.5.1

So when I load the attached PDF file, the preview and the printed result both show the completely wrong colour on a gradient in the design. How the **** does this happen? It's not any of the usual suspects, as I have no transparencies, overprints, or spot colours in the file. I've never had an issue like this with VersaWorks that was caused solely by a gradient.

File is attached if you want to look at it, but the gradient is simply primary yellow 0-0-100-0 to primary red 0-100-100-0.

 

OK so it looks like the issue is related to overprint, because if I add an overprint to the circle, presto! I get a green/black gradient on Overprint Preview.

The thing is, this PDF definitely does NOT have any overprints in it. Overprint Preview in Illustrator shows the yellow/orange gradient correctly for me. When I run it through a pre-flight check for overprints in Acrobat it finds none. There's also the Output Preview window in Acrobat that I attached in the first post, which also confirms there are no overprints in the file.

I'm not looking for workarounds. I just wanted to get to the bottom of why this is happening so I can avoid it in the future. Looks like I'm just going to have to cross my fingers going forward, because this is obviously a VersaWorks bug and I doubt Roland will ever fix it on VW5.

 

The design software is not the culprit, as I'm using the latest version of Adobe Illustrator. Clipping masks are not the issue here – when PDF files are generated they get filled with all sorts of extra clipping masks for various reasons. I drew a circle in Illustrator and applied a gradient to it, that's it. The culprit is VersaWorks, which is misinterpreting something, possibly related to the clipping masks that Illustrator automatically added to the PDF.

And once again, there are definitely no overprints in the file. You're misinterpreting what Illustrator is telling you. Assuming it's the Attributes panel you're looking at, an empty box means that none of the selected objects have an overprint, and a check means they all do. The part you're misinterpreting is when it turns to a box with a dash in it. If the dashed box is greyed out, it means none of the selected objects have an overprint setting available (i.e. a linked image or an unpainted vector), and if the dashed box isn't greyed out, it means some but not all of the selected objects have an overprint setting available, regardless of whether it's enabled on those objects.

So the non-greyed out box with a dash in it, that you think means there's an overprint somewhere, actually just means that there's a mix of objects that can and can't have an overprint setting.

 

That's not relevant if the issue we're discussing is why the RIP is misinterpreting the PDF file.

The "Preserve Illustrator Editing" option basically saves your working Illustrator file in a hidden "comments" section of the PDF file. The circle with the clipping mask is still there in the document data of the PDF. VersaWorks and probably every app besides Illustrator will ignore the hidden Illustrator data, and will see the the circle with the clipping mask.

You would never use the Preserve Illustrator Editing option on a final production file. It's there for PDF files that might still need editing.

 

As I said, the clipping mask is still there when you save with Preserve Illustrator Editing. It's there in the body of the PDF document, but it's not there in the hidden Illustrator data in the PDF file. Illustrator reads the hidden data and ignores the actual PDF data. All other apps will see the clipping mask, which is still there.

As proof, I saved a PDF with Preserve Illustrator Editing enabled, then opened the PDF in Acrobat, went into editing mode and edited the circle using right-click > Edit Using > Illustrator. I see a rectangle with a gradient, masked by a circular clipping mask.

And once again, you cannot set a clipping path to overprint. It isn't possible. You can set other objects inside the clipping group to overprint, but that's not what's happening in this scenario.

 

It's possible that the behaviour of the Attributes panel in Illustrator has changed. But are you selecting the Clipping Path, or the Clip Group? A Clip Group can sometimes have overprint options available that you can change, but the way that works is it just applies the settings to any objects within the Clip Group that have an overprint option. It still won't do anything to the Clipping Path.

I'm not an expert on the PDF format itself, so there could be something glitchy in it that we're not accounting for, but I trust that Acrobat isn't lying when it says there are no overprints in the file, because Acrobat is the tool designed by Adobe to thoroughly check for things like that.

So the RIP must be misinterpreting something, if there are no overprints in the file. I definitely don't trust VersaWorks 5 and under to interpret PDFs correctly, because it's always had issues with other things like transparencies and effects.

I have a few more ideas to test though, so I'll post back in case anyone's curious about the result.