Find image items, but only areas with non-white content

[dcardillo]

I have an Action and Preflight that find images (and other items) that exceed page boundaries. The issue is, for images, it returns positive results when the entire image bounds cross that boundary, even when that image content is knockout white. What I'm looking for is a flag that will return negative when it finds image content but that image is <1% of any ink.

I've poured through the Actions list, and all of the steps in creating them in the manual, and all my trial and error I cannot come up with a check for an object limited to non-white content.

My issue is I cannot have live matter cross page margins and need to check for it, but my check keeps returning images with white space.

And I'm aware I can use the Action to Crop White Border Pixels. (I can also endeavor to have designers crop their images properly.) But I have an extensive volume of backlist I'm checking (thousands of titles) and I need this process to be automated. I cannot individually go into each PDF and start manually cropping pages to get them to pass preflight. (I would also prefer to not edit the content of these files if I don't have to, so as not to risk introducing errors.)

[loicaigon]

Hello dcardillo

What about this approach?
- Select Images
- Select by Ink Coverage (including images) greater than 0
AND
- Select objects outside region (trimbox/overlapping)
AND

Tested on the linked files and it seems to work as expected. Unless I missed something?
https://fromsmash.com/F3ikCj~z-l-ct

HTH

Loic Aigon
PitStop Product Manager

[dcardillo]

Thanks, Loic, I was working down the same lines as this.

My issue, however, is not solid KO white objects, but images that have image content, but also wide white space that is not cropped. The live image content (e.g. an illustration) falls within the margins. But the uncropped white background area of the image exceeds the margins.

My understanding of the Select by Ink Coverage is it checks the entire image, not just those regions that cross the margin. Any image that had black content along with white content would get selected.

Basically, does the area outside this range have non-white content?

(I'm linking to a sample file: https://randomhouse.box.com/s/eyfcrn08z ... uqs58nhmyi )

[dcardillo]

I've been rethinking this, and I think I've got an idea of how to find images that have "live" (non-white) content outside the margins, while ignoring KO white sections of the image in that area.

I'm thinking some combination of "Check ink coverage (total page check)" but limiting it to only the area outside the type safety. That's the part I'm having difficulty isolating. Because I don't care if the image has ink inside the type safe area, only the parts of the image that extend outside the type safe.

All versions of this I've tried either A) find and select image objects that have non-white content (all of them); or B) flag an image for extending past the type safe area, even if that image background is knockout white.

Checking the ink coverage for a page checks the entire page area. The only limits are to areas _inside_ the page (Trim, Art, etc.) Is there a way to limit that to just the area _outside_ another page box?