Multiply instead of close cropping

[kierst_thara]

Hi! I recently got some files in for a 2 spot-colour job, with a number of montone .eps files placed throughout. Instead of close-cropping these images in Photoshop, the designer had left a white background in them, and used InDesign's 'Multiply' blend mode to cancel it out when it intersected with other objects in the layout. This, combined with her practice of screening back the spots with percentages of transparency, instead of using proper tints, created a file that our poor Brisque 4 just could not RIP as spot colour. We worked around it by mapping one spot to Black and one to Magenta, (I'm still not entirely clear on *why* this worked), but the multiply blend mode really played havoc on our overprint/knockout settings.

Anyways, I'm just curious if anyone else has run into this 'designer trick', and if it's really an acceptable practice, or if we can go back and tell her that 'proper' designers still have to close-crop their images, just like they've always done. I know our Brisque is fairly outdated at this point, and we are looking at newer workflows, so maybe some of this is just our equipment limitations. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[pmkprog]

My initial reaction is this. It's probably the Brisque more than anything else.
I know, I have the same problem.
Trying to get a designer to change their ways would also prove to be far too complicated in most cases, so just chalk it up to the Brisque as one more thing you have to work around.

[TimS]

Brisque 4 is pretty out of date when it comes to ripping transparencies. Even Brisque5 can sometimes be hit and miss with that kind of stuff, but much better than 4. Back in the brisque4 days we converted lots of complicated pms jobs to black and cyan or whatever.

[DCurry]

I've got PS/M 7, which is basically Brisque on a Mac, and also a Brisque 4. Both are old, but 99% of our jobs get ripped on the PS/M, including tons of transparency. If it has trouble, the Brisque doesn't. I've found that most problems involving transparency can be resolved by ripping with Postscript Overprint enabled, especially when dealing with the unholy alliance of spots and transparency.