Trapping problems in Quark 6

[Petrolhead]

Hi there I am a designer for a couple of car magazines in NZ. we are running OSX and using Quark 6, for the last few months we have been running along smoothly then all of a sudden we had problems with white text not showing up at ripping stage, we supply our pre press company PDF's the same way each time and never had a problem until now?

Our technician told us to just go to the trapping preferences and select knockout all but now that has created white lines in picture boxes because they are knocking out of the black keyline.

If anyone has any suggestions on what to do I would be very very greatful.

Cheers
Kimmbo

[Cory]

I would just set your white type to Knockout and leave your black lines set to Overprint..

Quark trapping can be pretty buggy, most RIPS's will allow the option to totally ignore quark trapping and use it's own internal trapping (if you have in-rip trapping). This is what we do.

[Petrolhead]

Thanks I Will try that the problem is I know its something to do with quark but what I dont know, I have never had this problem before usually we just PDF the job not even touching the traping on the job and leave it up to the pre press guys.

but now we PDF the job it looks fine in acrobat but when they get it at their end and put it through their rip if the page has white text on it it dissapears????

very weird Ive never had this happen to me before. I am just hoping its not because we are using OS X, I have heard it isnt that stable in the printing world and am very worried I may have to go back to OS 9 :?

[BillS]

I send many PDF's to press, including long color publications. My policy, which my printers endorse wholeheartedly, is to leave the trapping to them. If you can provide a good-looking PDF that passes a quality preflight check (preferably PDF/X-1a augmented with your particular requirements for image resolution, etc.), the rest is up to them. Even better if you can supply a good laser (though that's not really necessary if you supply PDF/X1-a, which was designed for "blind" file transfer). I wouldn't get involved in trapping your own files unless you really have the expertise to do it. If your prepress vendor can't trap your PDF you may need to find a new vendor.

Besides, I thought that Quark only applied trapping settings when outputing separations? Is that wrong, or are you creating pre-separated PDF's, in which case forget everything I just said!

[jv58]

Quark only applies its spread and choke settings on pre-separated output. Knockout and overprint settings from Quark will be honored in both composite and pre-separated output.

[Lammy]

Originally Posted by Petrolhead

Hi there I am a designer for a couple of car magazines in NZ. . . . .

Ok that has to be about the coolest job ever!!!

I just checked my Quark 5 and 6. Both automatically set black text to over print and white to knock out.

I'd double check your trapping preferences to make sure they didn't change in Quark. Also check that the trap setting in the trapping palette pop up for text is set to "default" and not manually set to overprint.

Are you files each month built from a template or from the previous months file?

[Petrolhead]

yes they are built from the previous month, do you think that maybe there coulkd be a corruption somewhere causing this to happen?

This is the weird thing I havn't ever had this problem in all the timer I have worked here untill now. I never ever touch the trapping preferences in Quark at all cause I know that its better to be done by the film outputers.

But I just cant figure out why this is happening. for example I did a four-page spread with a background image and white text ontop (heading, main body text etc) I PDF'd each page seperately and they all looked fine, but when the pre press guys went to run them through the rip two of the four pages had no text showing at all??? the weirdest thing about that is the text was linked through the four pages so I am stumped as to why one page worked and one page didnt. In the end I had to give them working files and they PDF'd it from OS9 using Quark 5 and it worked??????

[T-Rex]

Perhaps this is another symptom of Quark 6's sensitivity to font corruption. I have had a keyline that worked just fine in Quark 5, but when I opened it up in 6 it crashed when I tried to zoom in my view of the document, or scroll around.

I soon found it regarded a version of Helvetica Condensed as corrupt. I replaced that typeface with a different font family, and the problem went away.

Perhaps you should check into that particular typeface you used. Try using a different one and see if it persists. If it doesn't you may have a corrupt font, at least in Quark 6's estimation.

[Sparky]

One other remote possibility is when you "pick-up" an older document and change the type from say reflex blue to white without checking to see if the trapping was changed with it. I am used to doing all my trapping manually in Quark, since the days of 2.x. when you're brought up as a pre press composite stripper you just know you can trap better than some stupid program. Anyway, I got burned on that very thing when one of our customers file was "updated" and no one checked the trapping before it went ctp.

my .02?

[Eyetech]

IDCS page by page trapping via styles as opposed to QXP item by item defined trapping rocks!

By comparison QXP 6.1 is prehistoric...sorry but that's my opinion.