InDesign & printing problems

[Kelly Johnson]

The same page with the same illustration? Try placing the illustration into a frame of another document and printing.

As with Quark, sometimes a particular ‘part’ of a file can become corrupted; maybe there was a previous crash…does the illustration have any fonts that are not embedded? Are preferences in InDesign set to all the defaults?

I would first try printing the Illustration from Illustrator/Freehand/Corel whatever created it. No problems? Then put it into another InDesign file and test it. Send two black/white copies. Then send two again then two more again. Notice if it prints/doesn’t print throughout the print run. Six copies but three different times.

It might be a system thing if it doesn’t print on both copies. If, on one print trial it prints on one page, but not the second copy, then I would check for fonts set to outlines. If there aren’t any fonts in the Illustration, check the complexity of the Illustration itself. Perhaps it needs to be rasterized first.

What version of OS are you using?

[Lokeelee]

Thanks for the response. I spoke with my production person about your suggestions. Here’s what I was told:
1. She tried placing the illos in a different frame, but they wouldn’t print.
2. Fonts were checked & InDesign prefs were set at all the defaults.
3. Illos did print fine from Illustrator program in which they were created.
4. Using version OSX.
5. There are 3 differernt pieces of Illustrator art, all 3 will not print on the same page, but any two will. One of the files was saved as a dmg. file, then finally the page with all 3 illos printed. All of the illos are very small files.

Does any of this make sense to you? We have just started using InDesign for layouts. Quark is what we’ve been use to for years!
Thx!
Jan

[Kelly Johnson]

dmg? You mean dwx or dwf? DMG is not a file format for a graphic file. That’s a format, somewhat analogous to an .exe. It mounts a drive (soft) for installation.

One thing to try is to put all three Illustrator files into one document then, importing that file and just positioning the appropriate Illustration within the frame. So, you’re effectively importing one graphic three times.

It might be that one of the three has some element in its construction that is causing the problem.

You could also try and save the Illustrator files as .ai files or exporting them to Legacy .eps and version 9. Sometimes resaving trouble graphics in a different format or version can clean up behind the scenes postscript that could be causing the problem.

[Lokeelee]

Okay, here’s the deal

[Kelly Johnson]

Portable Network Graphic. The only thing png files are good for is the web. But, they’re not excepted yet by any of the major browsers. However, Flash can read png files and use them as they have a lossless compression scheme. Somewhat like LZW (Lemple Zivh Welch I think is close to the spelling) compressoin for tiffs.

Anyway, the png format wouldn’t be good to use at this juncture anyway.

Legacy+ if you’re using Illustrator CS or CS2, the only way to save a backward compatible file for use in older versions of Illustrator (up to version 10) is to go under File then Export.

If you’re using Illustrator 10 or below, you won’t have the Legacy option once choosing Export so don’t bother.

Another usual fail-safe, is to open the Illustrator file in Photoshop and select CMYK and 300 dpi for Photoshop to raster the file. Then, you’re placing a rasterized image instead of a vector. This can especially help alleviate missing fonts as Photoshop will tell you before it rasters the file that fonts are missing. Save the Illustrator files as Illustrator.eps for back up. If any changes are required in the actual Illustration, you can always go back to the original file, make the change and then re-raster in Photoshop.

Give that a try.