Quark table tif corruption

[soilworker]

One of our clients is using Quack 6.5's table creation tool and importing .tif files into the cells as swatches. This is causing an odd problem though, at least sometimes.

Our workflow here includes exporting the Quack file to PDF then RIPing it (nexus 7.5) to a .DCS then proofing etc.

In Quark the file looks fine as do the swatches, same with the PDF and the DCS but when we print a proof on any of our proofers or a Digital Blue Line one of the swatches turns solid black (I suppose it would be helpful to mention that all of the swatches are solid colors... why they didn't just fill the cells in Quark with the correct mix is beyond me).

This has been happening to a few of the pages we've received from them and it's becoming more prevalent. It's not the same swatch .tif on all pages that is affected although there are some in common. It appears to be quite random.

I ran a quick test and ran one of the "bad" swatches by itself (no table) on an othewise blank page through our RIP and the rest of our workflow. The same issue resulted so I figured great, it's just a corrupt .tif. Well, it would have to be a few corrupt .tifs since it wasn't the same .tif on each page. Alas, I should have known it wouldn't be that easy.

Instead of trying to figure out why each .tif had corrupted (there was nothing else technically wrong with them at all) I just removed it, filled the cell with the correct mix in Quark and sent it through our workflow again thinking all would be good.... wrong. Since I removed the bad .tif Quack took it upon itself to do the same exact thing to a different swatch that had previously worked perfectly on the same page even just minutes before. Even after doing my little test again on the newly killed .tif it appeared as it had become corrupt (or something else) as well.

So basically, I take out the bad file and a different one goes bad instead. Now, I only assume that it's Quack because I like to blame it for everything. For all I know our RIP isn't updated enough to handle tables created using the table tool in Quack. But, why on earth is it corrupting one image at a time? Anyone have any ideas for this one?

Thanks,
~Soilworker