mac quark, imported pdfs bitmapping

[bvjason]

I'm trouble shooting a problem at a newspaper that is confusing the heck out of me. Their production department has been importing ads into quark 4.1 pages for about two years. For the past week, on a seemingly random basis, some of the ads have been outputting with Quark's 72 dpi preview. The symptoms leading up to this vary: - sometimes quark will report the file as missing when you try to print it. If you try to update the file, Quark reports a "file not found (-43)" error. - sometimes it will report it as missing either during the printing process or just simply in the usage box. You can update it, it seems to work in the box, but printing yields a bitmapped ad (indicating that it didn't really get the link). - sometimes it will do any of the above, but instead of reporting the file as missing, it says its modified. - this has happened with ads that are on an external server (appleshare) and with ads that exist on the local machine. - It has happened when we try to output to both an imagesetter (using PIP software) and an HP LaserJet 8150 (and of course sometimes it reports the ad as missing or modified before we try anything output related) - some of the ads when opened in acrobat reader will report a "There was a problem reading this document (12)." error. But not with all ads. So those files may just be bad for their own reasons, making this "clue" a red herring. - the problem has happened on all the page layout machines in the newsroom, which at first led me to suspect network issues until I isolated the problem occuring with ads on the macs local hard drive. So whatever is causing it must be a common setting on all machines or a problems with the pdf files themselves. Here are version numbers of all the software involved: - Quark 4.1 - Quark PDF filter 1.6 - Acrobat Distiller 4.0 - Laser writer 8.7.1 - Acrobat reader 4.05a If anyone could offer some insight, it would be much appreciated. Even some questions that I might not have asked myself could help.

 

[Ecaboodle]

Sorry are the PDF's supplied from out side or do you create them yourself?

Quark is it version 4.1 or 4.11?

Sounds like Quark is dropping the link to the files half way through the printing process. Therefore giving you 72 dpi prints. If you can't fix it in 20 minutes call someone who can.

 

[GeorgeMack]

Other things to check:

Are the bad files being distilled at say 300 ppi, or for "screen" (72 ppi.) That in itself would make them bitmap, especially if they are images rather than text.

Are they being distilled with "all fonts embedded"? (And can your rip deal with that?)

I had some similar problems with my HP printer, which I used for proofing, until I upped the memory. Could this be an issue?

 

[solution]

The solution to this problem turned out to be that they were on 4.1. Once we ran the 4.11 updater, the problem went away.