Odd problem...

[Smileyguy]

Hey,

I'm hoping I can get some help with a strange problem. I don't have too much info, but it should be enough...

Basically I edit a local publication. We don't have ISDN facilities, and in one particular issue two of the pages (saved as PDF's) was too big for our email facility to handle, so we paid a local graphic designer to ISDN it to our printers.

When the PDF was exported from Quark and saved, it look normal. The final PDF then went to be sent to the printers looked normal. But when it came back from the printers, there was terrible colour banding across some of the images on the two large pages (about 20mb) that went down by ISDN, and nowhere else.

Can anyone figure out what happened so we can avoid this in future?

Thanks...

 

[CanadaRAM]

Questions Questions?
Were the OK pages other than the two big ones rendered to PDF as well? With the sames settings? On the same machine?
Did you print proof copies of the "OK" pages from PDFs before you sent them?
Did you print a proof copy of the big, bad PDF's before they were sent?

Next time:
You probably have some web or FTP space at your ISP that is going unused. Or you can negotiate some space. Then, FTP your pages to your space, and give the printer a login and password to retrieve the files. You can change your password if you like, or you can leave it in place for transferring the next issue.

 

[Smileyguy]

Yes, all the PDF's were rendered with the same settings on the same machine. No proof printing of any documents was done. A stupid thing I know, but were in quite a rush, and we never had the problem before.

I've tried the FTP thing. Our printer will only take emails our ISDN. I think he's too lazy to do much else.

 

[CanadaRAM]

Then he's going to have to courier you physical proofs and you will have to approve them before letting the job go to press. So you may as well send him a CD-R and your own printouts by courier from the start.

Your experience has shown that there is a problem with transmission. What the problem is isn't known. But your current workflow of email (and the not printing your own proofs) will rapidly become unworkable.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Hey, don't know if this will help... tried posting this 9 hours ago but kept getting slapped with a "Server too busy", but here is what I tried to write:

If you really included (and rendered in) the two images in question I have no idea why they failed, unless they were in the wrong Color Mode: CMYK vs. RGB...?

As to the other problem. I think you can send quite large emails with a gmail account. There is a limit, but I cant remember how high, just that it's quite a lot... Check out the "GMail pay it forward" thread for a GMail invite...

Later last night I found a place referring to max allowed GMail attachments at 10 MB, but I don't think it was totally current.