No anti-aliasing on PSM/Brisque.

[DCurry]

This has plagued me for years. Anytime the PSM or Brisque rips a file that contains CT images on top of each other, the resulting CT has jaggy, non-anti-aliased (or just aliased, I guess) edges where the 2 images meet.

Here's an example. I created this logo as part of a brochure in InDesign. Because I'm using ID's drop shadows, I want to force the white type into the CT so I don't get any "jumps" in the lines where a LW item becomes CT to accomodate the shadow, so I force it to CT by placing a white (blank) .PSD over the entire logo and set it to multiply. In the image below, the top one is Brisque's ripped CT of this, and the type edges are jaggy. In the lower example, the entire thing is assembled in Photoshop and the edges are nice and pretty. Before anyone tries to blame InDesign, this can also occur in Quark files where you might have a background image with clipping path images floating on top.



Sometimes, it is helped by setting the CT edges to use LW resolution, but often times this takes forever to rip and doesn't always rip correctly. It can also be improved by upping the CT res in Preferences, but then I am needlessly upsampling the rest of the file. I've also tried setting the Brisque or PSM Prefs to use Bicubic interpolation when generating the CT, but this does not change the results.

Anyone noticed this issue, and have you developed any other workarounds?

[zox]

We have noticed it and it bit us couple of times but I have not seen solution yet, short of manually doing it or as you noted upping the res.

Lately we have almost 90% of work going stochastic so our general rule for stochastic is to rip CT at 600dpi.
Since we started doing it we haven't really noticed it.

On odd job that goes regular screening you can clearly notice the difference.

We will be soon upgrading to Brisque 5, hopefully by the end of this month and we are getting service contact 24/7 so I'll try to pick their (Creo) brains for solution.

My personal problem long time ago was this At&T logo as it is created as gradient mesh and rips of course to CT.

We at the time had Harlequin rip that was ripping everything to 2400 dpi so we never noticed until we switched to Brisque and bit us ..ouch ops:
On Brisque I had to rip it at 800 dpi to get it close to harlequin but not 100%.

[gig0]

interesting post.

I ran a quick test file earlier today and came up with similar results, although it wasn't as pronounced as your example. There was a slight difference though.

From my experience using the technique, it hasn't come back to bite me in the ass. There have been catalogs I've run in the past where I've had to apply the transparency to rasterize whole individual pages (because of design elements) and left the facing pages to rip normally as-is. And even though I knew what's been done to get it to rip, you couldn't notice -or anyone else- a difference between pages on the final printed piece.

Maybe theres a difference between application flatteners or conflict in sampling or resolution? I'm going to test it out some more when I've got some more time... maybe try the same thing with a flattened pdf with images tiled with different settings or something.


And zox, theres been a few posts here about preventing gradients going CT. Try ripping the logo with 'Covert to PS L3' turned off under smooth shading or take it a step further by saving it down to PS L2 in Illustrator 8.

[zox]

Originally Posted by gig0

And zox, theres been a few posts here about preventing gradients going CT. Try ripping the logo with 'Covert to PS L3' turned off under smooth shading or take it a step further by saving it down to PS L2 in Illustrator 8.

Thanks for suggestion but I think I tried everything imaginable at the time without success.
If I ever run into it again I will certainly try it more expecially with Brisque 5.

[Mjetz]

There is anti-alaising in the Brisque starting with Brisque 4.1. It's called Smart Edge. It works very well. On the Brisque it's in the Rip setting under CT to CT res. If you don't have Smart Edge, call Creo. I believe it's a free upgrade, atleast for full service customers.

[DCurry]

Originally Posted by Mjetz

There is anti-alaising in the Brisque starting with Brisque 4.1. It's called Smart Edge. It works very well. On the Brisque it's in the Rip setting under CT to CT res. If you don't have Smart Edge, call Creo. I believe it's a free upgrade, atleast for full service customers.

Thanks - I'll look into getting that upgrade.

[PrepressRabbit]

I haven't heard of smart edge but I will certainly look into it. Our solution has been to rip the ct at 800. Takes longer, especially on large files, but it at least provides acceptable results.

[DCurry]

Originally Posted by PrepressRabbit

Our solution has been to rip the ct at 800. Takes longer, especially on large files, but it at least provides acceptable results.

Does it make the rest of the CTs look crappy, since you are in essence upsampling them at the rip?

[PrepressRabbit]

I have never noticed the rest of the image/s looking bad. In a couple of cases we have made spectrum proofs to confirm how the type will look and the rest of the ct's have been fine. No problems coming back off the press or negative feedback from the customers.

Zox,

On the At&T logo isssue, we rip with PS level 2 vignettes foricing everything to LW, we have master logos that we use all the time that we place into the files and rip. Never had a problem until......

When the client switched to Quark 6 and we printed off a G5 in OSX what use to rip as a LW with with our setting no longer did off the G5. The only work around that we could come up with for the time being was to save the Quark 6 file down to 5 and use it a patch file for the logo only and print it off a G4 the logo then would rip as a LW. We then would LW place the LW logo into the ripped file using Press touch. It's a long work around but the client like the LW logo and hates the CT version. What really is going to be bad is when the G4 finally dies and we can't use the old software no more down the road.

If anyone has had the same problem - -and has a solution by all means let me know what you did.