Freakin EPS' why are they so annoying?

Don't let Quark be your judge of color accuracy. There is no mystery to the .eps file. Its colors are its colors. However you test for color accuracy on any other file will apply here.

I have a feeling this is less about the .eps and more about using CMYK. While another color may have printed out fine the first time, changing the CMYK values produces a new color- one which is different at the printer than it is in quark than it is in the original file. The original may have been similar at all three spots, but that doesn't mean that the new one is. In order to ensure color accuracy, you should be using an equivalent Pantone color. At least, that's what I *think* is going on.

forget the eps and save the logo (if it's a flat colour) as a 1200dpi bitmap image out of photoshop and select the colour in quark. As it's the same res as an imagesetter the logo will be as smooth as an eps when output—don't worry how it looks on screen it will be perfectly rendered when printed

oh, one more thing it should be saved as a bitmap tif and coverted from greyscale with 50% threshold

Quark sucks though.

I stopped exporting EPS to InDesign and Quark and we killed Quark.

We import .AI and .PSD format to InDesign instead. Made our lives a lot easier.

artefact2001 said:

forget the eps and save the logo (if it's a flat colour) as a 1200dpi bitmap image out of photoshop and select the colour in quark. As it's the same res as an imagesetter the logo will be as smooth as an eps when output—don't worry how it looks on screen it will be perfectly rendered when printed

Click to expand...

No offense, but this sounds rather ridiculous. You should have no trouble just using an .eps. It's about as basic as it gets.

AFAIK eps is just computer code. Back in the bad old days (Illustrator 88) you had the option of downloading the eps files to your postscript printer. When I was doing pre-production I used to insist that any .eps format files sent by email be compressed to avoid corruption.

One thing you might try is saving the file in RGB format to see just what happens. Or, silly as it might seem, try saving the file with a completely different name in CMYK. If there is anyone else you know, or is in your office, you might try taking the file over to them to see what it looks like.

All I can think of with out digging into Quark, which I purposely am trying to avoid by fleeing to CS. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the easiest. Hope you work out your problem.

Color Calibration/Spaces

The issue may be your printer. Some printers have a built-in bias that only color calibration can really remedy. Without a significant investment in hardware and software for color calibration, you will always have to deal with it. I have a designer friend that uses a second set of colors when printing to her agency's color printer to get the look she wants. When it is time to go to press, she switches back to the specified CMYK or PMS colors. Personally, I have loosely calibrated my monitor but I don't worry about my printer. Mostly, because I don't want my clients to fall in love with the proof and be upset with the final printed piece.

The best thing to do would be to print out black and white color seperations. On the magenta page, you should see a 70% gray and on the yellow page you should see black. If you don't see this then there is an issue with the file. If things look good, make sure to get a color proof from the commercial printer before the jobs goes on press.

At the end of the day, I don't trust my monitor or printer when it comes to rendering color. I trust the numbers presented to me. The monitor and printer will give you a fairly good visual indicator but there are colors in CMYK and PMS that cannot be rendered even by a color space as wide as RGB.

I think the problem is most likely with Freehand. But the previous poster (I dunno who said it) is right: you should not use a mix color, you should definitely use a Pantone color. Actually, what you probably should do is figure out what Pantone color you want, and then rasterize the thing before it hits Quark. Just my opinion, though...