Product

Platform

Operating system

Error

Symptoms

Prinergy smooth shades (as set in Prinergy's Refiner, or in Distiller using the Distiller Assistant) output with "banding" on the shades.

This occurs with Prinergy PDF output, and PS 3 output.

Cause

The PostScript reference says, "setsmoothness sets a graphics state parameter whose effect is device-dependent. It should not be used in a page description that is intended to be device-independent."

In other words, since setsmoothness is RIP-dependent, RIPs should ignore it if it is present in the file. Prinergy currently ignores any setsmoothness values, and a future version of Harlequin might also do so.

Solution

Until the various non-Prinergy RIPs ignore the RIP-dependent setsmoothness operator, users may need a way to get Prinergy/Distiller Assistant smooth shades to work in non-Prinergy RIPs. Drop the attached file in your Distiller Startup folder and on your Prinergy server in the AraxiHome\AdobeExtreme\bin\CreoStartupNormOnly folder.

Prinergy will ignore this new setsmoothness value, and other RIPs who do not ignore this value will hopefully be able to render accurate smooth shades.

.

Note: this patch will only work on PS files either Distilled (with the patch installed on that Distiller), or Normalized (with the patch installed on that Prinergy). It will NOT repair PDF files that have the setsmoothness value already set before they are brought into Prinergy.

.

If rendering is too slow, increase the value inside the file.

If rendering still yields banding, lower the value inside the file even further.

Permanent fix:

See also

Normalizer or Distiller startup file which sets smoothness appropriately for RIPs who do not discard the value.

Keywords

normalizer, PDF, RIP

Technical contact(s)

James Bredenhof

Submitted by

Date submitted