QUARK TIFF problem?
 

Hello, maybe someone who is knowledgable in regards to Quark 6.1 for Mac OS X 10.3 could help me with an annoying problem:

Create a new quark file. Insert a black and white TIFF image. Change the color of this image within quark to say green. It looks great on the screen, just what I want. I then go and print it, and guess what, it's still black! Even if I go and Print Preview it shows up at black. Why is the color information being disregarded in this file? I have to keep TIFF, I can't change the format because quality is lost. This used to work fine in classic verison of Quark. Any ideas why this could be happening? Also, I have noticed that if you rotate the image say 0.01degrees it WILL retain its color information, however the quality of the TIFF degrades signifigantly as a result of this and is unacceptable. Quark technical support (LOL!!) and their knowledge base were of no help.


TIA,

Julian

Although it doesn't help too much, I've tried to duplicate this problem using v6 (I haven't gotten 6.1 yet), on both <whisper> PC </whisper> and Mac. The problem just doesn't occur, neither as separations to a postscript printer or to an inkjet.

As a quick solution, can you revert back to Quark v6?

Cheers
Dave

tell you what is happening !!!
 

i'll tell ya.....quark 6 is crap....there have been all sorts of problems with separations. I have given up and back to using 4.11. It works in classic mode as long as fonts are sorted....wow my office is pissed off. We bought version 4 ages ago and upgraded to 6 recently at my request....doh ! and i just can't use quark for jobs only...a fun app at the moment......ps 6.1 update has not worked yet....still no reponse from quark what a surprise.

lol more like laq ( laugh at quark )

good luck

Too right, Savage.
Personally I'm making the move to InDesign.

As far as I'm concerned Quark have shafted us once too often. Remember all the grief with 4.0? Now we're getting it all over again with 6 - and for £800+???
Forget it.

Cheers,
Dave

OK, but...
 

Does anyone know how to fix this problem?? I've reinstalled the OS from scratch, reinstalled Quark. TIFF's still print or print preview in black and white despite the fact that I've changed the image color with quark and it is displaying correctly on screen. Any ideas?

TIA,

Julian

How are you outputting the information? Are you saving a PS file or printing directly? What is the RIP? Are you printing composites or seps?

XPress 6 introduced a new output scheme: DeviceN. It combines the benefits of both comps and seps -- basically that you can get all your colours but still allow for things like in-RIP trapping.

I have advised all my customers to switch to DeviceN instead of comps to overcome this exact problem.

Well...
 

Printing directly, to screen or Epson Stylus Phto 1280. Could a lack of RIP be the problem? I mean if I output to the screen would a RIP still affect that? I dont know if they are composites or seps.

If a RIP is needed, what would you recommend?

What is this DeviceN? I googled it and I can see I can specify it when printing... But what if I do a Print Preview to the screen? What then?

Thanks for your help!

Julian


__>

I have advised all my customers to switch to DeviceN instead of comps to overcome this exact problem.

Re: Well...
 

Okay. Starting from the top: Colourising TIFFs is a cheat, and uses the Postscript imagemask function, I believe. If you're not using a RIP, there is no way for that function to be processed. Bummer for you.

What do you mean when you say printing "to screen"? Are you taking some kind of screen capture, or are you outputting to a Dainippon Screen device of some kind?

The Epson Stylus 1280 does not support PostScript directly, so you really need a RIP.

Mac OS X comes with CUPS (common Unix printing system), which supports the 1280 natively (some assembly required), or you could try Epson's own StylusRIP, which is basically s*h*i*t* in my experience. You could also explore other options, including BestRIP, BlackMagic or PowerRIP; these can become quite costly quite quickly.

DeviceN is a colourspace defined by Adobe in 1997 for outputting arbitrary multi-plate jobs. It does not assume that the target device requires a fixed number of plates (CMYK/RGB, for example). Since you're not using a RIP, it has no relevance.

Finally, print previews in OS X are PDFs, which means you still need a PostScript interpreter to print them properly. Converting that preview to TIFF or jpeg would preserve the appearance, but might introduce other problems.

Oh, and I just discovered that the forum is automatically starring-out my swearing. That's lame.

Re: Re: Well...
 

From the board FAQ:

• The term "free speech" has no legal context on a site such as this one. As owners of the site, and as those who are paying the bills to keep it online, we reserve the right to do whatever we feel necessary to insure that the forums meet our goals of providing an inviting, friendly, and knowledge-rich destination for all users and potential users of OS X. If this bothers you, please feel free to set up a forum site of your own.

Free speech
 

Wow, thanks for your condescending lecture. And you couldn't even be bothered to say anything yourself. How is your quote even relevant? How exactly did my post fail the test of "inviting, friendly, and knowledge-rich"?

I didn't raise free speech issues, nor do I lay claim to unfettered speech. I'm quite happy to participate as an adult in an adult forum. That includes stating my opinion on how a forum to which I contribute is conducted.

With that in mind, get out of my face. If you have a problem with my posts report them to a moderator. In other words, if you don't have anything to contribute, shut up.

wow...

i don't think rusto meant any harm by his last comment... he's actually quite a helpful guy.

it was moreso that you called out forum 'lame' ... something that we take personally here, especially when so many of us spend so much time helping people out.

rusto was just saying that it's the board's prerogative to star out anything they want. no need for name calling.

and definitely no need to tell anyone to shutup.

Thread derail
 

Once again I ask, how did my post fail the posting guidelines? You may have a higher postcount here, but these forums are as much mine as yours; I spend the entirety of my time here trying to post helpful information -- until I got armchair modded for a comment at the end of a friendly, knowledge-rich post. Has anyone even read my content? I've only got ~50 posts; have a look at them: they're all attempts to be helpful. I certainly don't call anyone names, despite your assertion.

Honestly, how is it helpful to make a content-free post in response to an irrelevant aside?

I stand by my comments. If anyone has a problem with my posting, then the first step should be to report me to the moderators. Posting a kneejerk quote from a FAQ which is not even relevant to my throwaway remark is puerile.

I won't respond to any further discussion on this issue, since I think this thread might still be important to the original poster. If you have problems with my posting take it to the moderators.

re Quark tiffs to black on print
 

What happens if you try export to PDF? can you adjust the PDF export settings in a way that the B/W tiff that has been set to green will export as green? If so (I think I had to use a setting of color "as is") then you could print the resulting PDF no problem.

Hope that works for you

Eric
www.sundialtime.com
_____________________________________________________
Fresh ideas for OS X writers and authors - www.ideafishing.com

Honestly, instead of playing all these games, I'd open the TIFF in PhotoShop, apply the tinting, and then import the modified TIFF into Quark.

That's only if they don't want the white areas of the TIFF knocking out. IE, if the TIFF is actually in bitmap format (purely black and white), then you can position it over things in Quark, and see things behind it through the "non-black" (ie white) areas. You can then colour it so that the black areas are green, the white areas can still knock-out.

If it is a bitmap TIFF, then I'd suggest using a different PPD (such as the Distiller PPD) when printing, and then print to a PS file. Then distill that file with Acrobat Distiller (i hope you have it) and print the resulting PDF.

Hi

"Honestly, instead of playing all these games, I'd open the TIFF in PhotoShop, apply the tinting, and then import the modified TIFF into Quark."

And you would have done one of the most common error of bad designers..., those who doesn't really know what is printing with an offset-press.


More than the problem of the "transparency" of the white zones of the bitmap picture, there is also another (big) problem:

- a TIFF bitmap colorized in XPress is printed at its full resolution, as all its pixels are printed "as is" by the imagesetter: if you print a 1200 dpi bitmap picture with a 2400 dpi imagesetter, the result is a real 1200 dpi picture,

- but your TIFF Photoshop-coloured image will then be a CMYK picture, that will be printed by the imagesetter "through" a screen, and the result will have the resolution of this screen: 120 or 133 or 150 dpi and will appear "blurred" after printing with an offset-press (this "blurring" begins to disappear with a 175 lpi screen or more).

This "blurring" doesn't appears with a good ink-jet printer: that's why bad designers often do this mistake, because they only work with seeing the result on their ink-jet or laser printers, and are not able to take care of the real result (nor imagine the result) coming out of the offset-press.

Claude

Wrong. Not all Photoshop TIFFs are CMYK - it depends entirely on what colour model you choose. I've been happily saving monotones, duotones & spot colours for years (and have never had a job back that didn't look exactly how it was intended to look). Also, if you save a file in bitmap format it won't RIP with a screen. Guaranteed.

Dave

Hi

Sorry, english is not my natural language, and perhaps it's difficult for you to understand my bad english...

1)
"Also, if you save a file in bitmap format it won't RIP with a screen. Guaranteed."

You're right, and it is exactly what I said, with other words:

"a TIFF bitmap [colorized in XPress] is printed at its full resolution, as all its pixels are printed "as is" by the imagesetter."

I thought "as is" was enough, but perhaps I should have precisely added "avoiding screen"
Sorry for this misunderstanding.


2)
"Wrong. Not all Photoshop TIFFs are CMYK - it depends entirely on what colour model you choose. I've been happily saving monotones, duotones & spot colours for years"

First I must be sure of my vocabulary...
- spot color: I print publication with only two colors, black and green Pantone 354. I then make two plates, one to print the black ink and the second to print the Pantone 354 ink. In that situation the P354 is a spot-color?
- duo-tone picture: this is a grayscale picture printed twice with two different inks with a customizable transfert-curve for each ink? Some years ago, to do that job with a camera, I made two films, with two different orientations of the lenticular-screen (avoiding moiré), with two different exposure times and two different flash-exposure?


I never succeeded to colorize a bitmap picture in Photoshop with a Pantone colour, then import it in XPress and print it as a spot colour.
To be completely honest, except for duotones pictures (if I don't mistake with the word), I never succeed to work with spot-colors in Photoshop... So, to "colorize" a bitmap, I have found no other solution that transform it in CMYK and apply the required percentage of C, M, Y and Black. That' s why I said:

"...but your TIFF Photoshop-coloured image will then be a CMYK picture"

Please, explain me how you can colorize a bitmap in Photoshop, (keeping the bitmap file mode, so that there is no screen applied while printing), import in XPress and print the spot color plate?

If you want a "private" exchange, my address is: claudeh@l-arbre-aux-papiers.com


3)
"(and have never had a job back that didn't look exactly how it was intended to look)."

In France, the printers and pre-press operators never give a technical feed-back to the designers... they simply correct the mistakes and, if necessary, rebuilt the documents (Words document for example...) so that it prints exactly as the customer wants...

If you are colourizing a TIFF grayscale image, you must fill the picture box white or 0% black

If you are colourizing a TIFF Bitmap image, you may leave the picture box with a fill of none.

If you are trying to overprint the TIIFF Bitmap image, over some other background , your tint may be cancelled out by the underlying colour.
( a 20% tint of 187 will not show on a 30% tinted background. Try setting your options in trapping to Knockout.

Other than that I have never had any problem imaging coulorized tiffs.

Dr G

Hi Dr G

"Other than that I have never had any problem imaging coulorized tiffs."

As I did say to you, you're a lucky man!!!

Personnaly, I really had 3 problems with colourized TIFF in XPress:

1) sometime, and I never understand why, XPress refused to colourize a TIFF picture... I checked the picture with Photoshop, it's a TIFF (bitmap or grayscale, no matter), no extra option, no difference with other pictures... but impossible to colorize it???

2) once I had a subcontractor that never succeeded to burn the films of a 40x60cm poster, getting a postscript error when attempting to print: the problem came from a little TIFF bitmap picture (2x2cm, 600dpi) green colorized (C100-Y100). We made a CMYK TIFF file, pasting the picture in the C and Y coats, and it prints without problem. But the result was not so good, as the CMYK picture was printed through a screen (150 lpi). The RIP was an Harlequin based RIP, but I don't remember the release.

3) Printing on an offset press a ReflexBlue colourized grayscale picture with an Orange021 background (for example) gives sometimes some strange results, depending of the alignment (or the misalignment!!!) of the two colours and the trapping used: overprinting blue and orange gives a bad almost black color, a perfect alignment of the two colours is almost impossible and trapping a 150 lpi screen is more a joke than the reality...


I never experimented such problems, but according to InDesign's 1.5 user's manual, a PDF file containing colorized TIFF, DCS file or duotone EPS created with Photoshop prior the 5.02 release, will not be separated with a Postscript RIP level 2 and will print only on the black plate...

Claude
Thanks for the info. I will keep that in mind about In Design when I get comfortable with it.

I think we all agree that it is best to create final Image files in PSD and use the page layout for the purpose intended "layout" and layout only.

Lets just be thankful we dont have to use COREL!!!

Dr G

Hi Dr G

Sorry, I believe that there is a misunderstanding: I found this info about troubles with PDF and colourized bitmap pictures on the InDesign manual, but it concern all the PDF files prior release 1.3 or 1.4; not only those created by ID...