Product

Platform

Operating system

Error

Symptoms

Preps 3.6, 3.7. The following problem occurs when using Preps to create an imposition job ticket for Prinergy. The marks for the imposition job ticket are converted to PDF using Distiller. Preps marks always seem to overprint rather than knockout. Customer wants some marks to overprint and some marks to knockout.

To reproduce the problem: Customers would like some marks in the imposition to knockout rather than overprint. For example, suppose I have takeoff bars along the left and right edges of my imposition. Then, I want to place collation marks along one edge of the imposition. I want the collation marks to knockout the portion of the takeoff bar that the collation marks overlay. Unforturnately, the collation marks overprint rather than knockout. There doesn't seem to be a way to get the collation marks to knockout. Even if we set the properties of the collation marks to "Bring to front", the marks still overprint.

Cause

Solution

There is a workaround to this problem: The user can duplicate each collation mark (in the same location as the original) and change the color of the duplicate mark to "0% All Separations". Then make sure that the "Bring to front" property of the duplicate mark is turned off. Now the duplicate mark will knockout the takeoff bar, allowing the original collation mark to appear without overprinting the takeoff bar.

Unfortunately, the workaround is awkward because customers complain that their users often forget to create the duplicate set of 0% marks. They would like the ability within Preps to explicitly set a mark to knockout rather than always overprinting.

Permanent fix:

See also

Keywords

imposition [layout], Preps

Technical contact(s)

Louise McTague

Submitted by

Date submitted