How can I get colors to print when they don't?

[andy182]

Hi Y'all,

My Quark documents are not printing the colors on my document. I have replaced them with a same color build and deleted the non-printing color with some sucsess. Does anyone know why this is happening? And what to really do about it?

Thank you,

Andy182

 

[RyanPace]

I think we need some more information. Are these placed graphics that are not printing.
What exactly are you replacing with the same build?

more info....

 

[andy182]

The colors that don't work are spot colors created and then used as CMYK. So a PMS red 032 lets say the build is 100 Magenta and 81 Yellow 0 Cyan and 0 Black, will not print at all. It knocks out to white. If I make a new Color and delete the Red 032 and replace it with the new color (same build 100m, 81y, 0c, 0k) it will print about 60% of the time correctly. I had a job with allot of pms to process colors and about half did not print. I made the document into an eps, brought it into Adobe Photoshop® and flattened it and saved it back out placed it and it printed.

Let me know if this works for a better description.

Thank you Andy182

 

[RyanPace]

If you go to "Edit"/colors in the menu palette you will see a list of all color used in your document. If you select a spot color and choose edit, you will see a button that says spot color, if you uncheck this, the color will print as process. You do not need to change the color model to CMYK. Just uncheck the spot box.

 

[andy182]

Ryan,

Thank you for taking the time to look at this post. And I'm sorry, I meant to explain I did that. What I'm trying to say is that when a customer is using a color, say Pantone 185. When I convert it to process it isn't printing everywhere. So a color the client uses cmyk or spot to cmyk is working like this. I did convert it by the edit color menu selection.

When I print the document some words print and others are not there and some are, tints in boxes too. So the same color as a word in CMYK prints on one area and not the other. Most did get dropped on the second page of the document?

If I make a New Color and make it the same CMYK Build as the color I'm missing elements with and tell those elements that didn't print to be that New color it works pretty well. On one document I had to do this twice and yet another three times. I seems like a bug. On these documents the customer created them in 6.0.

I hope this makes it clear, and sorry if I didn't explain this well enough earlier. Your input is very valuable to me.

I'm on mac, if you would like I can send the trouble document to you and see what you think.

Thank you - Andy

 

[blueark]

It's strange that it prints some of the time, but not others. When you create an EPS and flatten it and place it again, it prints ok. When you get to this stage, it is essentially one large raster graphic, so it is much easier to interpret than the original document, which may have many complex elements.

To troubleshoot this, you might have to try a few techniques. To start with, instead of bringing the EPS into Photoshop, just place it as is. I would presume that the same problem will occur, but let us know if it doesn't.

You don't mention if you're using Quark 6 as well as your client. If you are, try back-saving it to 5 (on a backup document) and printing from that.

At this stage, it might be worth looking at the elements within the document. The quickest way to do this is to delete half the elements and see if the problem persists. If it doesn't, it may be something (image, font...) that you've deleted. Narrow it down by repeatedly removing half the remaining elements until the document works, then replacing items until the problem occurs again. You can also replace the fonts with something simple as a test.

All this is just guesswork, though. If it works on someone elses computer, it may just be a problem with your printer drivers. It's worth trying this, and upgrading your drivers if possible. Exporting a PDF and printing from that is another possibility.

 

[andy182]

Thanks Blueark,

I had the same thing on a new job. Now I'm looking for it. I missed it on the first go around. The way I got the new file to run everything was to open it in Adobe Photoshop®. I did open and flatten. Nothing worked before that.

I tried replacing the cmyk colors with colors named differently and built with the same percentages of CMYK.

I tried just an eps from quark. It still isn't including all colors. They are all built CMYK and selected as process, not spot.

I'm going to try PDF next - I'll keep you posted. OBTW this job was QuarkXpress® 5.0 Mac. The originals came in 6.0, I tried them in 6 and saved them back as 5 too. I'm on Macintosh. The 5 files are being run on System 9.22.

Thanks Again,

Andy182

 

[blueark]

Did you get a chance to try them on a different Mac/Printer combination? If it's convenient, upload the files somewhere and provide a link, I'll see if the same thing happens here. If it works on other printers, it may be something simple like having to update your drivers.