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Printing & Prepress

martinjamesrock Calculating status...

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cross apps pdf problem

Jul 11, 2012 5:04 AM

Categories: Macintosh Tags: #pdf

I often have to open pdf's in illustrator and when saving back and opening in acrobat i sometimes get very thin white lines and boxes.

I've been told this is just the view in acrobat and this will not print.....but i had a instance where they did.

anyone had this problem and found a solutiion?

323 Views 3 Replies Latest reply: martinjamesrock, Jul 12, 2012 3:15 AM

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1. Alec Molloy,

Jul 11, 2012 11:02 AM in reply to martinjamesrock

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I have had instances where documents created in InDesign have shown up with thin white lines in Acrobat that didn't print, but I have never had them actually show up on the printer.

Maybe we could help if you shared screenshots.

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2. Dave Merchant,

Jul 12, 2012 1:37 AM in reply to martinjamesrock

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@martin: Do you really need to open PDFs in Illustrator? Although it's possible, Adobe advises against round-tripping PDF files through AI. The ability to open PDFs in AI is intended so you can move a PDF document into an AI workflow (e.g. adding a logo to some artwork), but the PDF files that AI saves are created using different code - Acrobat isn't involved - and as you've found it can often introduce strange effects.

@Alec : If you're seeing 1-pixel-wide white lines on screen at certain zoom scales (especially in conjunction with bitmap images) which aren't part of the original document, it's likely to be the result of ID slicing the page elements up into blocks for efficiency. Although they will line up exactly (and so print out OK), some of the display options in Acrobat (enhance thin lines etc) can reveal them if the zoomed scale of the screen image means the division between slices appears at a fraction of a pixel. Provided the files print OK there's nothing to worry about, but if your document is destined for screen display and it's bothering you, there's a Preflight fixup in Acrobat Pro to "detect and merge image fragments" which usually helps.

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3. martinjamesrock,

Jul 12, 2012 3:15 AM in reply to Dave Merchant

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Thanks for this.

I use illustrator to prepare files for print....I receive pdf artwork with the usual no bleed, wrong size, non embedded fonts, resolutions etc.

I've found that AI is the most reliable, or i do the 'criminal' act of taking a trip to photoshop for a bit of high res rasterizing!!

I use pitstop plugin extensively but have had some unpredictable results once going through the workflow.

And true the thin lines dont print but client's panic when they receive a pdf proof !!

Thnks for the 'preflight fix up' tip, i use preflighting quite regular, especially in pitstop with its action lists.

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