[Adolf Witzeling]

Hi Jason,
I think of what you describe, you are trying to beat a dead horse…
No matter what program you use, vectorizing is not the solution, to make “jaggies” go away.

I suspect that the drawings you did in photoshop were done at low res. 72 dpi? ( like Jason M. mentioned).
So, no matter what ,it’ll be never a clean crisp image. If starting over with the drawings (you could use the low res version as a template, when redoing in a more sufficient resolution) is not an option, you could try to improve the image, by using an app. like GenuineFractalsPrintPro, which due to it’s differnt conversion or up-sampling algorithm than photoshop does a pretty decent job.
But don’t put your hopes to high-it’s not going to be a champion.

Another option could be to print your current image from PS at about 60% to a good quality color printer (photo printer) at maybe 1440 res., then scan it back into photoshop at 600
dpi, so you have room to play and enlarge.

I also like what Jason Milligan suggested, Live trace the outlines etc. and redo the gradients in Illustrator.

Hope that helps, good luck.
Adi

[Adolf Witzeling]

The rich black you specified isn’t really a rich black, but rather a rich “brown”.
Yellow should always be a little lower or same as magenta and cyan, but not more.

Also, be very carefully where you apply rich black, otherwise the commercial printer printing your stuff might send a “hitman” after you.

Bottom rule: never apply rich black to body text. Most rips nowadays can be set to automatically overprint pure black ( 0c,0m,0y,100Black), so there won’t be any trapping issues. Building text in rich black is just calling for trouble…

It really should be used rather on large solid black elements, because the screens help build up the density of the inks and therefore helps producing a deeper smooth black.

Instead of building rich black with screens in c,m and y and 100 Black, it’s also very common to just “underlay” the black with let’s say 40 cyan. You’ll get a nice almost like steel “blueish” black.

[Adolf Witzeling]

Thank you zrb,
I followed your advise and downloaded Carbon Copy Cloner (very reasonable shareware fee, by the way) and it worked like a charm. Very easy to use..one click and done!
Once again thanks for the help.

To me it’s just wonderful to see how folks here at the Cow donate their time and knowledge to help each other out. That what keeps the world spinning….

cheers,
Adi

[Adolf Witzeling]

hi,
try these settings in Illustrator CS2.
Place the Photoshop picture in Illustrator.

ADJUSTMENTS

1: select the picture withe selection cursor…
2: choose LIVE TRACE from the menue and in the Tracing options to start out, try these settings:
Mode: Black and White/ treshhold 128/ Blur 1.3 pix

TRACE SETTINGS

path fitting: 2 pix
minimum area: 10 pix
corner angle: 20

Play around with these setting, experiment, it’s fun…
you can get all those different looks….

take care,
Adi

[Adolf Witzeling]

Hi ,
If you don’t mind, let me throw in my 2 cents worth.
If money does play a role, there’s some very reasonable training online available, that your whole art department certainly would benefit from.

I’m not sure if I can name any sites on this forum, but I have my design department signed up with a site, that costs $25 per month to watch step by step tutorials and training for pretty much any programm out there. You can also sign up for a year and you will also get all the files used in the training. The site is named after a lady, who foundet the site….dubbleudubbleudubbleudotLYNDAdotc.m ( you get the idea).

Invite your administartors to one of the sessions and they will see for themself, how many new features in CS3 will give your graphics a new fresh look in less time, than if you would keep working in CS.

Just one feature I want to mention is the 3d capability of Photoshop, where you can import 3d models and keep working in “3d” in PS.
It will give your graphics a fresh new look…..bring the 2-dimensional print design to a new
level..from blah to wow.

Oh, and the above site is not the only one out there, there are many excellent sites that provide training for very little money.

Your designers even could study at home , after work, when they have time, and then come to work and use their new learned “tricks”
take care and good luck convincing those burocrats that design ALWAYS should be a progressive medium.

Adi

[Adolf Witzeling]

Hi,
you might have “stray points” in your document. To check go to:
SELECT…OBJECT…STRAY POINTS. It’s easier to find stray points or empty text boxes if you are in “outline mode” in Illustrator. (“VIEW”….”OUTLINE”) Then hit delete.

Besides that, I wouldn’t sweat too much about it…everything will be allright ;=)

Adi

[Adolf Witzeling]

Hi,
try: View…Show Edges.
Adi

[Adolf Witzeling]

Hi,
I believe your guess goes in the right direction.

Illustrator seems to be missing a link. If you place an image in Illustrator, you can either link to it or embed in the Illustrator file. When saving as an EPS, whover created the file might have not checked the “include linked files”.

Pull up the link window in Illustrator (Window….Links) and see if there is a link referenced.

Next check the disc you received and make sure the link is not on there. Sometimes links are getting lost just by moving the file to another disk and therefore the link to the external high. res. file needs to be updated. In the link window click the little triangle on the upper right and choose the appropriate choice ( replace link….update linke etc.)

If the link (missing file) is not there, ask the provider for the missing file, or to send a new eps with all the links “embedded”
Hope that helps.
Adi

[Adolf Witzeling]

Yes, once converted to outlines, you can save it as a PDF . If the document is for a commercial printer make sure to use “Press Quality” setting when saving as pdf .

You CAN’T reverse the process of converting to outlines and then back to editible text.

It is a good practice, to convert to outlines, when the document is ready to go and FINAL.
But save it with a different name…like “myFile_Outlines.eps” so that if you need to, you can go back to the original document “myFile.eps”

Hope that helps.
Adi

[Adolf Witzeling]

Hi,
In your situation, the cleanest and best approach would be to convert the fonts in your Illustrator document to outlines. “SELECT “Select all”….”TYPE” “Convert to Outlines”.
When doing this the font is converted into vectors (outlines). That way the printer will NOT need any fonts from your document. This is a save way to prevent font substitution or other font related issues at time of output.

Your other question regarding MS Word: You can either directly export to pdf by enabling macros, or by printing it directly to file using Distiller as the printer. The resulting “.ps” file can be distilled with Acrobat Distiller.

Note: you will have to have the full Adobe Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader )installed, which is in my opinion one of the most underrated programs on the planet.