CS3 loses changes made in Illustrator 10 2

Working on Mac OSX and using Illustrator CS3 to "edit" old (version 10) illustrations. When saved in CS3 or saved as in CS3 or 10 – edits are lost. Specifically "Overprint fill" in Attributes palette. Goal is to place Illustrator files and have fill (20 percent black) knock out, not overprint, various colored backgrounds in InDesign for color consistency in final printed piece.

What did not work: 1) copy and paste into new document 2) Save As back to Illustrator 8 3) Quit Illustrator, shut down computer and reboot

Re-creating illustrations in CS3 is not an option as they are complex and fill a 480-page catalog.

How can I be assured the fill will not overprint when placing on colored background? Put white fill behind illustration?

Thoughts? Thanks!

 

[eugenetyson]

In InDesign, go to View>Output>Separations Preview

Select the Seps preview and see how the black is interacting by turning off the black channel. If you can see right through to the page then it is knocking out.

Anything that is not 100% black in InDesign should be set to knockout automatically, certainly true of the black in InDesign.

Can you not just select the same fill black in illustrator and then open the Attributes panel and set it to not overprint?

http://www.doozler.blogspot.com/

 

This works perfectly in InDesign – our layout program of choice. While in the seps preview, I saw where the illustration looks the way it came off press (wrong fills). Opened the illustration, edited it, saved it, updated etc. Beautiful.

The catalog is actually laid out in Quark 6, now opening in Quark 7.31. So sorry, I mistakenly wrote InDesign where it should've been Quark. Wishful thinking. I can't seem to find the same sep preview choice in Quark menu or Help. Anything that resembles a prepress operation is grayed out. Are you as literate in Quark as InDesign?

I may get to switch the catalog from Quark to InDesign yet.

 

[eugenetyson]

I don't think Quark has a seps panel.

It's been a long time since I opened Quark. But eps are better for quark, rather than .ai or .pdf.

(But I'd stick with .ai or .pdf for indesign, i wouldn't go with eps for indesign.)

To be honest, you'd probably do yourself a favour by setting up the shadows and the background in illustrator so that you can control there. Then put the eps file into Quark as a whole. Otherwise I think you'll be shooting in the dark.

It's really hard to tell without seeing the files and stuff. And seen as I don't use Quark anymore, I wouldn't be able to help with that either.

Tek Tips does have a Quark Forum

http://www.tek-tips.com/threadminder.cfm?pid=260

http://www.doozler.blogspot.com/

 

I'm new to Tek Tips as of yesterday. I did hunt down their forum earlier this morning and found LOTS of interesting tips. Could spend the day there.

The illustrator files are all .eps for the Quark document. Nothing done to them in Quark. They're diagrams of metalcutting toolholders and such – pretty mundane. Because the catalog is so big, there are close to a thousand of them. If I get to re-create the catalog in InDesign, I'll surely switch them to .ai.

The other issue I was having was opening the old (v10) illustrator file, making a change, saving it and having the change not show up when I opened the file again in CS3. Since there's no convenient way to preview the seps in Quark (to make sure the revised file was going to print correctly), I had to open the Illustrator file to check that all was OK – either through Quark or Illustrator. I could also check the date of the file through the Usage option in Quark, but still can't see how it will actually print on press. Not good. I need that visual reassurance.

Perhaps my computer has healed itself since yesterday as all worked fine when I made an InDesign file, placed the known bad illustrator files on a colored background and followed your original suggestions. Really nice!

Too bad Quark doesn't have the seps preview option. I will definitely take a tour of the Quark Forum on Tek Tips. This is one of the very few jobs in house still in Quark as it's just too big to change. But who knows what could happen.

Thanks again for your insight.

 

[apepp]

...quark doesn't have any separations preview, not even quark 8, you therefore have to export from quark to PDF and use Acrobat Pro to view separations...

...quark 6 and 7 don't support native .ai import, so you have to either import EPS or PDF 1.3 format...

...quark 8 does support native .ai import...

andrew

 

Unfortunately, the "overprint fill" checked or not checked issue of the Illustrator .eps files placed in Quark was not apparent in the pdf files sent to the client for approval nor on the Quark file itself.

I, along with seasoned others in our office, have never used the Overprint Preview option in Acrobat (or InDesign for that matter). Therefore, the problem didn't appear until it was on press. With so many illustrations to be done, we had several people working on them simultaneously. Hence the inconsistencies.

I tried your suggestion of opening the pdf in Acrobat to view the separations and voila! Problem appeared. You can even turn off the black plate to see where the illustrations are or are not knocked out of the background.

I applaud the Tek-Tips techies! Many thanks to all of you for teaching a new trick to this old dog.

 

[apepp]

...this illustrates the issue with trying to approve PDF files on screen, as one user can view a PDF different to another. The same problem happened to a colleague of mine in prepress, his issue was more to do with overprint white...

...he had overprint preview turned on in Acrobat, and his client who was approving the job didn't, so what the client saw was a nice white patterned background...

...my colleague sure enough had run press match proofs out, which didn't have the white pattern, which he thought was correct when comparing to the PDF on screen, if he turned overprint preview off, he would have noticed the PDF supplied was actually incorrect...

...of course this was a "breakneck speed" friday afternoon "must be on press NOW!!!" type of job, so it got printed with two people believing what they saw on screen...

...job was ultimately reprinted when client discovered the calamity involved and for the sake of an extra day or so to actually see a printed proof the client might have saved some trees, same is true for my colleague if he had turned the overprint feature off in acrobat. My colleague happened to be my boss so it was chronic humble pie for him for the times he used to go ballistic on others that were fallible too...

andrew

 

Had to chuckle at the Friday afternoon scenario – when else would it be? Everyone's been there . . . and will unwillingly return to that place again.

Fortunately, I have a great boss. Totally believes in the fallibility of everyone and understands we're all just doing the best we can.

Thanks again for the speedy and noteworthy responses.

 

[apepp]

...indeed, if it doesn't happen on a friday, it would be 10 minutes from when you want to go home an on another day...

...one thing i forgot to mention was the use of acrobat pro preflight feature, under the advanced menu, it's not as in depth as a commercial preflight tool you would find in a well equipped prepress environment, but can be worth using early on in a workflow...

...there are a plethora of pre-made profiles in acrobat pro, and also the ability to perform fixes, but care should be taken if you do us the fix up functions...

...quite often your better off just going back to the source artwork where possible and fixing there...

...don't forget you can also replace specific PDF pages in acrobat pro with new ones under the document menu, as opposed to recreating a whole new PDF again from the source...

andrew

 

Again, thanks. In this particular case (and also because I'm a bit obsessive) I would make any changes to the original as the Quark is in reader spreads and the Illustrator files are used in different jobs – so once I update/change them it has to be to the source file, not the Acrobat file. But, it's a great idea to keep up with a job using the overprint feature in any program that supports that function. It will be my new mantra.