Managing PDF for press - Pitstop Pro / Pitstop Server

[mwinker]

I'm working on a flow that processes files to an Indigo Digital press. I've run into a bit of a snag with a few jobs.



A little background first. Most files in this flow are a PS exported out of Quark 8.5 and go through Acrobat Distiller for PDF conversion in PowerSwitch. Process is usually RGB going in and converted to CMYK in a separate action later in the flow.



The files giving me issue have a placed image in a box of "None" on top of another box containing a color called "DNP STOCK ECRU". In this case it's a grayscale tiff. The proof pdf comes out with the grayscale overprinting the background stock color and looking good.



The issue comes in trying to remove that background color for the press. My first "action" was to remove the spot color "DNP STOCK ECRU". But, the image takes on properties of the spot color below and also gets removed.



With the enfocus eyedropper on the image it says the colorspace is "indexed DeviceN (Spot + process colors)" That's in the distilled PDF before any additional processing.



I also tried an action that remaps the spot color to 0% of CMYK. This action ignores the image completely while changing the "spot color only" elements.



I haven't found an obvious action to edit or remove the spot color in that image yet, but I'm still pretty much a novice at the program and have just started to uncover it's depth.



Any Ideas?



Thanks,

Mike

[mwinker]

I might be onto something with this. My Quark export settings are set to flatten transparency. If I set it to ignore transparency, it seems to go through just fine. I'll have to test it more with other jobs.