Quark Forums

Quark 8.1.6, Imac osx version 10.5.8,pdf export from Quark

We publish a newspaper using QuarkXPress. We typeset in Quark and gather ads created both in-house and by agencies, and place them into the Quark layout. The ads are usually Adobe CS5 generated and are placed into the quark layout as pdfs. We have had problems with the ads being placed in the Quark document and printing out correctly to laser proofs for our proofing process, but when the files are output to final PDFs to send to the printing house, random type characters will drop in the ads in the final pdf form. This does not happen predictibly. When it does happen it is usually a critical piece of information on an ad. Have others experienced similar situations? Anyhelp would be appreciated.

 

Are you placing the elements from each ad into the layout file or are you exporting PDFs and placing PDFs? If the latter, try Save Page As EPS, embed fonts and see what happens.

I work for a community weekly and that's how we do it. XPress handles EPS better than PDF.

The ads are placed as pdfs in the quark layout. We have tried placing the ads as eps in the layout and have had worse results. Is this what you are saying or are you saying to do the final export from quark as save page as eps?

No, I'm saying save the ads out as EPS. If you embed the fonts and make sure everything is in the correct colorspace (we usually export AsIs) you should not have too much trouble if you have everything in the right colorspace. I have had some issues from time to time (usually bad fonts) but it's been a pretty solid workflow for me.

Yes we have tried that as well, and have tested the problem ads as eps, with the same results with those ads. We have placed the ads as pdfs for years without a problem. We never had this problem before with Quark 7 and have been using Q 8 for perhaps 18 months, and the problems have been noticed for the past 6 or 8 months. Thanks for the responses.

Is the problem occuring with PDF created from ID or from Quark? or both? I would suspect a font restriction issue. Is it a particular one? If not, how is made the PDF? Isn’t there an option to be selected such as embedding fonts or sth?

Are you checking the fonts are embedded or embedded subset in the pdfs you are placing?

Does the name of the font appear more than once in the PDF Document Properties?

Are the font names the same in more than one of the pdfs you are placing?

Are you exporting/printing more than one page at a time?

Have you cleared your font caches recently?

All of these and more can cause your symptoms [:'(]

 

Just today, I had a PDF placed into a Quark 8 layout of a magazine we're printing. PDF looks correct, but when the PDF exported from Quark it looks bad.  The text in some lines lost all word spaces and looks like one big jumbled word.

We placed the same ad PDF into InDesign 4, exported a PDF and it looks correct. We then place the PDF we exported from ID into same Quark page and exported another PDF and it looks correct.  It's a bug with Quark.  We had other problems with jagged text near transparencies/dropshadows.  

Nowhere in the post about this process did you mention anything like: "We opened the PDF into Acrobat and Saved out an EPS. Then we placed the EPS into a Quark layout of a magazine we're printing. EPS looks correct, we exported the PDF and it looks correct."

Yes. It's a bug with XPress. You are 100% correct. The solution, often repeated here, is to open the PDF in Acrobat and Save As EPS. If your PDFs are coming from XPress documents, don't export a PDF. Save Page as EPS and embed fonts.

You will continue to get the same results you are getting now placing PDF files. XPress handles EPS better because it hands off the postscript code to the final print device and the device handles it. With PDF, XPress internalizes the postscript code and processes it on print. It does not hand it off to the final print device. You can see what a wonderful job XPress does at it.

We have had the problems that Larry mentions as well with the jagged text that appears to bitmap in transparent areas. Glenns addresses some valid points. The fonts are embedded. The pages are exported as individual pages. Usually there is only one ad per page, but the font names in multiple pdfs on a page is a great point. eyoung- We are doing what your first paragraph mentioned, with the exception of the final pdf looking correct. Saving the ads as an eps does not solve the problem every time but solves the problem some of the time. Bottom line from this thread seems to be that work arounds are required to achieve the workflow we have used in the past as things have changed with Quark. 10 or 15 years ago I would of gasped if someone told me they were importing pdfs directly into a page layout program and exporting pdfs directly out of a page layout program, but Quark claims that ability now and people do it. The bitmap situation that Larry mentions is troublesome as well. It seems that Quark has a problem to address as they put the functionality to import a pdf into a document, but not the ability to output that page predictably, although other file types seem to be affected as well. I thank all for the responses

Journal:

It seems that Quark has a problem to address as they put the functionality to import a pdf into a document, but not the ability to output that page predictably, although other file types seem to be affected as well.

I would say the culprit is the PDF creator (the person who created the file you get). I don’t think Quark ever said any PDF is good for importing into a Quark doc. I might be wrong but as long as I don’t read Quark documentation saying it can import any PDF, I’ll think I’m right.

Some months ago a guy came to me with a ID doc asking me to finish the work and send the PDF to the printer. For some reasons, I had to give the file back to the designer and ask him to finish it himself. (He’s not a graphic designer. He’s a photograph.) He said OK. He finished the work, created the PDF with the right settings sb gave him (sort of PDF Xa 2002 or sth). He was the sure it is the best PDF format so went on. When he got the book printed (and after the printer man corrected a bunch of « details »), he saw some text was hidden by a picture… Only to say that even using predefined PDF output settings, the job can be badly made.