Just wondering if anyone else has been having the same issues we have been experiencing. Sometimes (not all the time) when printing a vector file created in Illustrator the printer will start printing different colours in the text adding objects and all sorts of weird stuff. Half the font will be one colour and the other half another. We are using Postershop 6.5 and when the file is in preflight most of the time it views "normal"
We even outline the fonts and that sometimes helps but does not completely correct all the gremlins. If we flatten this off and send through a tiff, then no problems. Obviously this is making my designer pull out his hair as designers are fragile creatures without all of these problems.
Glib comments aside, Your problem is probably not the rip. It's most likely the silly transparency features in AI. Files that use a lot of transparency often don't work properly. I could write a book on the reasons/solutions but the bottom line is you often have to rip the files in photoshop to get what you're looking for- you've already discovered this. I advise people to use the old ways of creating soft shadows, blends etc. to eliminate the crash and burn of AI transparency. To be fair- modest transparency effects often do work. The flattening that occurs making an EPS or PS doesn't always do it properly and some files just won't work at all. A tip we've found helpful- we print PS files with the acrobat PPD and then distill a PDF to send to Onyx. That workflow seems to work better on complex files (with transparency). Good luck Aussie girl!
I've had the same problems as John with the transparencies. There are lots of ways to work around this. The main problem occurs when using transparencies with spot colors. There is even a warning in Illustrator about this problem when saving an EPS. The easiest way around it is to simply convert the spot color to a CMYK breakdown. As far as the text goes, if you always convert text to outlines there won't be any problems.
I'm not a big fan of printing PDFs. I've had a lot of problems with them as far as color matching and stuff just randomly disapearing out of prints. Designers love the format though, so sometimes I just have to deal.
What I have found (as advised by Onyx, if you use Postershop) is that "transparency" option in "RIP settings" should be turned on. We had problems with PDF formats and this option helped.Dont knowe how it will affect if the problem is caused by export procedure. Hope this will help.
