Product

Platform

Operating system

Error

.

Symptoms

Optimizer complains about finding a /DeviceCMYK object in the PDF during refining.

DCS image is rendered in such a way that it overprints any spot color elements beneath it.

Cause

Separated Postscript actually looks like multiple pages when you examine the code. Each page corresponds to a separate color.

Usually, the first four pages are black, cyan, magenta, and yellow. Any spot colors would be on the pages following those.

Imagine a CMYK+1 spot color (called spot1) image from Photoshop, with a circular clipping path. Place this image into a QuarkXPress document and position it on top of a different spot colored rectangle (called spot2). We now have a document with CMYK plus two spots.

Pour separated Postscript. Pages 1 to 4 are for C,M,Y, and K, page 5 contains data for spot1, page 6 contains data for spot2. Each page contains only black or greyscale data.

The circular 5 color image is on top of the spot2 colored rectangle; it was set to knockout. So on page 6 we have a rectangle that colored black (100% of spot2 = 100% black). We need to knock a white hole out of it for the circular image. We use white because the image contains no spot2 colors, and shouldn't print on the spot2 plate.

White can be defined in a number of different ways: 0% K, 0% calibrated greyscale, 0c0m0y0k, etc. But when pouring separated Postscript, only black or uncalibrated greyscale-defined colors are allowed.

Quark has a bug where it defines the "white" circle as a calibrated greyscale color (or in /CalGrey colorspace, using the official term). When RIPed with Adobe RIPs (with in-RIP separations off), these objects are ignored. Quark *should* have used a greyscale colorspace

Solution

Use the Colormatcher while refining to convert the /CalGrey objects to /DeviceGrey color:

Open the ColorConvert pane in the ProcessPlan Editor, and set either:

Override Embedded Profiles to ON; or

Set the Final Output Process Target profile to "gray:GenericGray.icm"

Permanent fix:

See also

Keywords

color, file formats, Quark, refiner, spot color

Technical contact(s)

Gordon Miller

Submitted by

Gordon Miller

Date submitted