monotone eps (psd) files in illustrator

[judystev]

I have a series of photoshop (v7) monotone eps files that get imported into illustrator (v10) to 'join' the rest of the artwork elements. So far, so good.

I then pdf the illustrator files (save as pdf).

All the colours of the monotone files look wrong whereas the colours of all the illustrator elements are fine. (eg. monotone pan1797, red, displays brown/gold on screen and will print brown/gold as well).

I have imported the same monotone eps files into freehand + quark and the pdf's created look/print correct.

Could there be settings in illustrator or photoshop I am not aware of / a bug in illustrator or . . . ?????????

 

[decksnap]

Just curious why in the world you would be placing bitmap files into a layout in Illustrator. I would recommend merging your vectors and bitmaps in Quark, or even bring the vectors into Photoshop instead of the other way around.

 

[judystev]

I am preparing the templates for packaging a/w files for a big product range (a few hundred). The product range is subdivided into sub-ranges/types by using spot colours (approx. 15 different ones). The box design got designed/developed by the customers own designers/agencies - so I am only taking over and the their a/w templeates can’t be handed over to me. The bottom line is the a/w has to be setup cmyk+special (for colour consistency and keeping in mind packaging-production will be happening through various product manufacturers in the far-east.)

Box design:
Plain colour all around (ie. red – pan1797) but on some panels there is a white glow.
On top of the glow will be the product image and then of course there will be lots of copy, drawings etc.

What I have done how I see the hole a/w process go the quickest:
1. Plain monotone spotcolour (ie. red – pan1797) background big square to suit all box sizes + export as eps (to be imported into illustrator)
2. Plain monotone spotcolour (ie. red – pan1797) square with the white glow + export as eps (to be imported into illustrator)

All cutterguides already exist in illustrator.

The idea is to bring all the a/w elements together in ai. Keeping in mind the resources + time and the amounts of amends and versions involved this seems to be by far the most efficient way of managing the hole.

 

[decksnap]

Hmmm. Still seems to me to be a Quark job. You will get more consistent results printing and distilling postscripts out of Quark anyway. I wasn't aware that it was ever a good idea to place bitmap images into Illustrator for real printing.

But hey- sounds confusing, and I could be wrong! I'm sure someone else will chime in and be more helpful.

 

[aricher]

decksnap - I always place bitmapped images into Illustrator. I work on large scale POS (point-of-sale) displays that require complex diecutting. Both my printers and corrugate vendors require final files to be provided on the Adobe Illustrator dielines they originally supplied. I agree that in theory it doesn't sound like a good idea but in my niche of the business it's very common practice.

judystev - I'm afraid that I don't have an answer for you on this. Maybe you could try saving the Illustrator file as an .eps and then run it through Distiller to create the PDF. I'm grasping here but it might work. I'll send your question around the office to our gurus and get back to you.

 

[decksnap]

Is this because they don't allow a file at a percentage of the final print size? We typically place the die line file in a quark doc as an .eps.

 

[aricher]

Is this because they don't allow a file at a percentage of the final print size?

I don't think that's it - however we have had problems with that in the past. The way one of our typical jobs works is like this: Our print vendors turn the die layer off when printing the final files. The corrugate vendor then takes the printed sheets and mounts them to corrugated cardboard. They then put the mounted sheets through the die cutter and trim them into the final production pieces.

I do know that both our print and corrugate vendors had some problems with Illustrator dielines being placed into Quark. Apparently on a few jobs their pre-press guys didn't turn off the Illustrator dieline before printing and wasted about 200 sheets before realizing that the POS was printing with the dieline visible - ah well - at least it wasn't the whole 80 K print run that was destroyed. On a couple of other jobs the placement of the Illustrator dieline in Quark was slightly off - creating a huge problem - namely having to rerun about $100 K in printing. Lucky for me that was a screw-up of an outside agency. THIS is the main reason why we do not accept layouts that have been created in Quark. If the die is off it can be costly. It's a bit of a pain to work like this in Illustrator but it has saved many Quark-produced headaches and a ton of reprint cash.

 

[judystev]

aricher - please keep me posted if you hear some clever solution to me problem.

A 'emergency' solution could be to create eps files of all the ai artwork files, then importing them into qxd and create pdfs. That seems to work (ads an extra step to the process though). The pdfs are going to be used for visual representation on screen + laser prints for a/w (contents only) sign off. For colour sign off we will have cromalins produced.