Strange Printing Problem?

[Nohjekim]

I have a job that I am preparing in Adobe PageMaker and converting to PDF files.
It is a menu that has 8 individual pages.

The PDF files are all created using the standard “Print” setting in Distiller.
The files are then sent to the client who will print the menu on his Epson C82 printer.

The problem is this; one of the pages, the cover literally, takes ten minutes or more to send to my Epson printer even though it is only a 658k file.

I have rebooted and tried printing this file before doing anything else but it is always slow.

It does print correctly eventually but all the other pages load in only a matter of seconds.

The Page has 2 graphics one is large and is a 7 Meg tiff file 150 dpi CYMK created in Photo Shop; the other is a smaller tiff file of only about 1.5 Megs. There is also a few lines of type created in PageMaker.

Most of the other pages have a larger number of smaller graphics files at 266 dpi and the PDF files are actually larger then the cover but all of them print quickly.

I reduced the resolution on the larger of the files on the cover from 266dpi to the 150dpi it is now and recreated the file with no apparent change in printing speed.

I don’t want to send this to my client until I figure out why this one file is acting so strangely.

Anyone have any ideas?

Mike

 

[Eggles]

This is a wild guess - but what happens if you change the graphics to RGB? You haven't said whether your printer is postscript, but on the assumption it isn't, I have found most non-PS printers work better with RGB files than CMYK - simply because the maufacturers assume (probably correctly) that most users of non-PS printers wouldn't know the difference bwtween RGB and CMYK and have built in software that converts RGB to CMYK. Perhaps that's why the page is taking so long to print? It's converting CMYK to RGB and then back to CMYK (which will probably also mean the colour looks awful). But of course this doesn't hold up if ALL your graphics are CMYK. For desktop printing, 150dpi is probably OK. You probably wouldn't see much differnece between that and a higher resolution.

 

[Nohjekim]

I'll try changing it to RGB and see what happens though all the other files are CYMK as well.

It's strange I always use CYMK since it's easier to keep things straight if I don't do it one way for press and another for printers.

I have done zillions of these menus and normally have no problems but this one page in spite of its small size takes forever. I do believe that I have had this happen before but don't remember when or how I resolved it.

Mike

 

[Nohjekim]

Well I think I have solved the problem.

The cause seems to be a bad color profile for the smaller of the 2 tiff files.

I discovered this when I decided to redo the page by pasting the elements into a new document (a technique that has solved other printing problems I have run into in the past) when I attempted to paste it into the new document I received an error message that the file could not be copied to the clipboard because the color profile could not be found.

I don’t know how this file received a different profile then the others it was created in Adobe Illustrator and converted to a tiff in Photoshop.

I opened the file in Photoshop and applied the standard Photoshop 5 color setting, then replaced the image with the new one.

When I made a new PDF file, the file printed in a normal amount of time.

Mike

 

[Eggles]

Glad you got it resolved.

Re: I opened the file in Photoshop and applied the standard Photoshop 5 color setting...

What exactly did you do? I am not sure I follow what it means by 'colour profile'.

I agree it's a pain having to have two sets of images in different colour modes (RGB and CMYK). But there are times I have found it necessary - simply to get a better colour print from the in-house printer.

 

[Nohjekim]

In Photoshop 6 you change the color profile by selecting "Edit" and then "Color Settings".

This applies if you are using color management between programs, such as Photoshop and PageMaker.

If the same profiles are used in both programs the colors in theory at least stay consistent from one to another and when converted to PDF.

Two of the standard settings are the default Photoshop 4 or 5 settings but there are many others.

I try to keep it simple as I can.

Mike

 

[Nohjekim]

Forgot to ad that the color profile is embedded in the file.
In this case the file had a profile embedded that was not available to PageMaker or Distiller apparently.

Mike