The macosxhints Forums - Quark & InDesign

Hi Dave, thanks for BTW

"The crunching of the file size can be drastic - and is undoable."

I like the word "crunch" for the JPEG compression... ;-))
but I think you mean "and is NOT undoable"?

"So once you've saved as JPG there's no point in saving as a TIF. The damage will have been done."

You CAN save a JPEG picture as TIFF, but you're right: that should never be done, as the damages of JPEG have been done, they remain in the TIFF file.
That's one of the more difficult things to explain to all these numeric-photographs users, with their PCs (PC = PoorComputer), Word and Publisher and other Microsoft's softwares... After half an hour of explanationsssss, they answer "But, with my ink-jet printer, I have no problem!!!". Arrgghhh... sometimes I have killing desires... (I'm sure you understand me)
Once, I said to my customer: "Ok, just go to a shop, buy 200 ink-cartridges for your so wonderful ink-jet printer, and if you begin today, you'll perhaps have your 30,000 A5 leaflets for Christmas..." (it was in September or October).

And next time they come with their JPEG numeric-photographs and JPEG (or even .DOC) logos, they say me "I'm sorry, I know you won't like it, but I have nothing else!". So, as I have no other choice, I save the JPEG pictures as TIFF files, and rebuilt the logos with Illustrator, and I do the job the best I can with the sh...t they gave to me.

Once, I had to make a 84 x 59 cm (33.1 x 23 inches) poster, using for the background a 2 megapixels (1600 x 1200 pixels) JPEG numeric-photograph!!! The poster was portrait orientation and the photograph was landscape, and I had to distort the picture to suit the size of the poster: 1200 pixels for 33.1 inches makes a 36.3 dpi resolution. I tried to explain to the customer that it wouldn't give a correct result, but there was nothing to do, he wanted this picture on the poster... ("Do it, or I go in another print-shop")
I made it (with over-sampling the picture in Photoshop... ooohhh, what a shame... I'll go to Hell), and the customer was happy when he got his posters: he found that the result was perfect!!! No comment.

"Anyone that does this in a repro environment should be shot through the lungs (or perhaps I'm over-reacting....)

You confirm what I think: this job will kill me.
I'm sure that you are over-reacting: if did that, I would loose half of my customers (and it would cost me very much money to buy the bullets). I just sit down, the head in the hands, smoke a cigarette, and say in my mind that I'm really doing a sad job.

JPEG is a wonderful compression... when used by people who know exactly how to use it, who know exactly what to do, and what to never do.
Used without the needed knowledge, it's the worst thing for printers... in fact, one of the worst things, with Microsoft and his softwares, that allow everybody to believe that pictures, drawing and text are easy to process.

Hi Dr G

I forget to say that during my tests, I always use single-file DCS 2.0...

"I hate to admit it , but I have used lower settings in instances where size restrictions ( emailing an image to a supplier ) force me to make adjustments."

That's what I hate in this job: we are always obliged by something or somebody (often somebody who doesn't know the job) to throw away our basic knowledges and make poor job for bad reasons of money or time. You said a right word: "forced to make adjustments". I hate "make adjustments", because often the customer says you "But the result is not so bad, I was right, you can do (like) that"... Argghhh, sad job...

"Having the JPEG encoding write the compression seperately for each plate"

Yes, I did understand that, when I saw that the four colour-files had different sizes.

"I have had situations where I am setting up a BillBoard Design 20' wide and the resulting psd file is well over 800 meg."

Wwwwoohhh... How do you get 800 meg with 20 inches wide? with a 300 dpi resolution, it makes about 120 inches long???
Do you print with 250 lpi screen? or leave all the layers in the PSD file? I don't understand, please expain me?

I currently print 80 x 60 cm (31.5 x 23.6 inches) posters, and the size of the picture is about 265 Mo at 300 dpi (32' * 300 dpi = 9,600 pixels, 24 * 300 = 7,200; 7,200 * 9,600 = 69,120,000 pixels; CMYK means 4 bytes for each pixel: 69,120,000 * 4 = 276,480,000 bytes = 263.67 Mo).
But instead of compressing the file(s), I prefer use a lower resolution: there is no need to have always a 2 quality-ratio (normally, for 120 lpi and lower, it's better to use 2 as quality ratio, over 120 lpi, 1.5 is enough).
I currently print on recycled papers that need a 120 lpi screen, and an 1.5 quality-ratio gives perfect results: I use a 180 dpi resolution and the picture is about 95 Mo.
Sometimes, I use 150 dpi: my pictures are about 70 Mo.
Even if it isn't the normal way of printing (when "forced to make adjustments"), for a poster, it is possible to use a quality-ratio as low as 1.

Sorry for Illustrator... I had no problem to import a DCS 2.0 file in Illustrator 9, but I didn't make a printing test: I never print with Illustrator... Printing with this software is for me a real nightmare.
If I good remember (and if I haven't been mistaken...), I believe that DCS format has been developped specially for XPress... I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't work with Illustrator.

As Illustrator isn't a good text editing software and cannot easily be used to replace XPress (or ID), what's the use of placing big DCS files in Illustrator?
The only use I have with placing bitmap pictures (TIFF or EPS) in an Illustrator drawing is to rebuilt quickly a logo: I keep the picture in a bitmap format (grayscale or CMJN) and I type the text.
If I don't find the font, I simply import the text in 1-bit mode at higher resolution, ben-day coloured... ok, that's quite poor job, but it gives a much better result than keeping the text in grayscale or CMJN. If the original JPEG or TIFF logo had a good resolution or was much bigger than you need it, the result is almost as good than a true Illustrator vector-drawing (is that the right word??? sorry for my english...).

Claude