VersaWorks gradient changes from red/yellow to green/black???

[shoresigns]

Roland XC-540 on VersaWorks 5.5.1

So when I load the attached PDF file, the preview and the printed result both show the completely wrong colour on a gradient in the design. How the **** does this happen? It's not any of the usual suspects, as I have no transparencies, overprints, or spot colours in the file. I've never had an issue like this with VersaWorks that was caused solely by a gradient.

File is attached if you want to look at it, but the gradient is simply primary yellow 0-0-100-0 to primary red 0-100-100-0.

 

[Joe House]

Not sure on this one. I opened it up in VW6 and printed on my VG2 and it looks great. I'm loading the original VW on my computer so I can at least see what the preview does - I won't be able to print out of Versaworks though. I'll let you know what I find out.

 

[OADesign]

I printed your image VW Dual 1.6 and it came out fine. I also opened it in Illustrator (not sure what program it was designed in) but I didn't see any thing odd there.
I know you said there were no transparencies in the image, but have you tried flattening the image? Or the embedded profile? Document color mode?

 

[ColorCrest]

Look to see if the yellow and magenta are named colors.

 

[Solventinkjet]

I brought it into Illustrator and it looks like the way the gradient was made was a square gradient and then a circle clipping mask was made over that. For whatever reason when the clipping mask is in place , illustrator thinks it is set to overprint because when i turn on overprint preview, it turns green just like yours. A quick fix would be to just knock out a copy of the circle from the background. That way it won't have anything to overprint.

 

[shoresigns]

I brought it into Illustrator and it looks like the way the gradient was made was a square gradient and then a circle clipping mask was made over that. For whatever reason when the clipping mask is in place , illustrator thinks it is set to overprint because when i turn on overprint preview, it turns green just like yours. A quick fix would be to just knock out a copy of the circle from the background. That way it won't have anything to overprint.

OK so it looks like the issue is related to overprint, because if I add an overprint to the circle, presto! I get a green/black gradient on Overprint Preview.

The thing is, this PDF definitely does NOT have any overprints in it. Overprint Preview in Illustrator shows the yellow/orange gradient correctly for me. When I run it through a pre-flight check for overprints in Acrobat it finds none. There's also the Output Preview window in Acrobat that I attached in the first post, which also confirms there are no overprints in the file.

I'm not looking for workarounds. I just wanted to get to the bottom of why this is happening so I can avoid it in the future. Looks like I'm just going to have to cross my fingers going forward, because this is obviously a VersaWorks bug and I doubt Roland will ever fix it on VW5.

 

[Solventinkjet]

OK so it looks like the issue is related to overprint, because if I add an overprint to the circle, presto! I get a green/black gradient on Overprint Preview.

The thing is, this PDF definitely does NOT have any overprints in it. Overprint Preview in Illustrator shows the yellow/orange gradient correctly for me. When I run it through a pre-flight check for overprints in Acrobat it finds none. There's also the Output Preview window in Acrobat that I attached in the first post, which also confirms there are no overprints in the file.

I'm not looking for workarounds. I just wanted to get to the bottom of why this is happening so I can avoid it in the future. Looks like I'm just going to have to cross my fingers going forward, because this is obviously a VersaWorks bug and I doubt Roland will ever fix it on VW5.

It's the clipping mask that is throwing everything off. This seems to be a glitch in the way your design software makes gradients. When I select the circle on your original file without changing anything, illustrator says one or more components selected are set to overprint. If you select just the gradient with the white arrow tool it is not set to overprint so that means the clipping mask itself is set to overprint for some reason. A clipping mask is not treated the same as a regular object so your RIP is probably confused because of this. Technically a clipping mask shouldn't even be able to have the overprint attribute. This tells me that the design software is the culprit.

 

[Solventinkjet]

I don't have your fonts so ignore that but see my copy of the file attached. I made the circle with the gradient and didn't use clipping masks. If you bring this file into your RIP it should not turn green.

 

[shoresigns]

It's the clipping mask that is throwing everything off. This seems to be a glitch in the way your design software makes gradients. When I select the circle on your original file without changing anything, illustrator says one or more components selected are set to overprint. If you select just the gradient with the white arrow tool it is not set to overprint so that means the clipping mask itself is set to overprint for some reason. A clipping mask is not treated the same as a regular object so your RIP is probably confused because of this. Technically a clipping mask shouldn't even be able to have the overprint attribute. This tells me that the design software is the culprit.

The design software is not the culprit, as I'm using the latest version of Adobe Illustrator. Clipping masks are not the issue here – when PDF files are generated they get filled with all sorts of extra clipping masks for various reasons. I drew a circle in Illustrator and applied a gradient to it, that's it. The culprit is VersaWorks, which is misinterpreting something, possibly related to the clipping masks that Illustrator automatically added to the PDF.

And once again, there are definitely no overprints in the file. You're misinterpreting what Illustrator is telling you. Assuming it's the Attributes panel you're looking at, an empty box means that none of the selected objects have an overprint, and a check means they all do. The part you're misinterpreting is when it turns to a box with a dash in it. If the dashed box is greyed out, it means none of the selected objects have an overprint setting available (i.e. a linked image or an unpainted vector), and if the dashed box isn't greyed out, it means some but not all of the selected objects have an overprint setting available, regardless of whether it's enabled on those objects.

So the non-greyed out box with a dash in it, that you think means there's an overprint somewhere, actually just means that there's a mix of objects that can and can't have an overprint setting.

 

[Solventinkjet]

The design software is not the culprit, as I'm using the latest version of Adobe Illustrator. Clipping masks are not the issue here – when PDF files are generated they get filled with all sorts of extra clipping masks for various reasons. I drew a circle in Illustrator and applied a gradient to it, that's it. The culprit is VersaWorks, which is misinterpreting something, possibly related to the clipping masks that Illustrator automatically added to the PDF.

And once again, there are definitely no overprints in the file. You're misinterpreting what Illustrator is telling you. Assuming it's the Attributes panel you're looking at, an empty box means that none of the selected objects have an overprint, and a check means they all do. The part you're misinterpreting is when it turns to a box with a dash in it. If the dashed box is greyed out, it means none of the selected objects have an overprint setting available (i.e. a linked image or an unpainted vector), and if the dashed box isn't greyed out, it means some but not all of the selected objects have an overprint setting available, regardless of whether it's enabled on those objects.

So the non-greyed out box with a dash in it, that you think means there's an overprint somewhere, actually just means that there's a mix of objects that can and can't have an overprint setting.

It's the way you are saving it then. Make sure the, "Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities" is selected. When I save it with that option it preserves the circle gradient. When I save it without that option, it makes a clipping mask. That should do the trick!

 

[shoresigns]

It's the way you are saving it then. Make sure the, "Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities" is selected. When I save it with that option it preserves the circle gradient. When I save it without that option, it makes a clipping mask. That should do the trick!

That's not relevant if the issue we're discussing is why the RIP is misinterpreting the PDF file.

The "Preserve Illustrator Editing" option basically saves your working Illustrator file in a hidden "comments" section of the PDF file. The circle with the clipping mask is still there in the document data of the PDF. VersaWorks and probably every app besides Illustrator will ignore the hidden Illustrator data, and will see the the circle with the clipping mask.

You would never use the Preserve Illustrator Editing option on a final production file. It's there for PDF files that might still need editing.

 

[Solventinkjet]

I'm telling you that saving without preserving editing settings is creating a clipping mask around the gradient and for whatever reason the clipping mask is set to overprint. If you open the file after saving it without preserving illustrator editing the gradient circle is now a square gradient with a circle clipping mask and the mask is set to overprint. That is the issue.

 

[shoresigns]

I'm telling you that saving without preserving editing settings is creating a clipping mask around the gradient and for whatever reason the clipping mask is set to overprint. If you open the file after saving it without preserving illustrator editing the gradient circle is now a square gradient with a circle clipping mask and the mask is set to overprint. That is the issue.

As I said, the clipping mask is still there when you save with Preserve Illustrator Editing. It's there in the body of the PDF document, but it's not there in the hidden Illustrator data in the PDF file. Illustrator reads the hidden data and ignores the actual PDF data. All other apps will see the clipping mask, which is still there.

As proof, I saved a PDF with Preserve Illustrator Editing enabled, then opened the PDF in Acrobat, went into editing mode and edited the circle using right-click > Edit Using > Illustrator. I see a rectangle with a gradient, masked by a circular clipping mask.

And once again, you cannot set a clipping path to overprint. It isn't possible. You can set other objects inside the clipping group to overprint, but that's not what's happening in this scenario.

 

[Solventinkjet]

As I said, the clipping mask is still there when you save with Preserve Illustrator Editing. It's there in the body of the PDF document, but it's not there in the hidden Illustrator data in the PDF file. Illustrator reads the hidden data and ignores the actual PDF data. All other apps will see the clipping mask, which is still there.

As proof, I saved a PDF with Preserve Illustrator Editing enabled, then opened the PDF in Acrobat, went into editing mode and edited the circle using right-click > Edit Using > Illustrator. I see a rectangle with a gradient, masked by a circular clipping mask.

And once again, you cannot set a clipping path to overprint. It isn't possible. You can set other objects inside the clipping group to overprint, but that's not what's happening in this scenario.
View attachment 141386

Weird. When I open it in my Illustrator, when I select the clipping mask, it shows as overprinting in the attributes window. I'm on an older version however. At the end of the day something is telling the RIP to overprint the gradient and I don't think it's the RIP misinterpreting. I think the file is getting messed up somewhere in the middle.

 

[shoresigns]

Weird. When I open it in my Illustrator, when I select the clipping mask, it shows as overprinting in the attributes window. I'm on an older version however. At the end of the day something is telling the RIP to overprint the gradient and I don't think it's the RIP misinterpreting. I think the file is getting messed up somewhere in the middle.

It's possible that the behaviour of the Attributes panel in Illustrator has changed. But are you selecting the Clipping Path, or the Clip Group? A Clip Group can sometimes have overprint options available that you can change, but the way that works is it just applies the settings to any objects within the Clip Group that have an overprint option. It still won't do anything to the Clipping Path.

I'm not an expert on the PDF format itself, so there could be something glitchy in it that we're not accounting for, but I trust that Acrobat isn't lying when it says there are no overprints in the file, because Acrobat is the tool designed by Adobe to thoroughly check for things like that.

So the RIP must be misinterpreting something, if there are no overprints in the file. I definitely don't trust VersaWorks 5 and under to interpret PDFs correctly, because it's always had issues with other things like transparencies and effects.

I have a few more ideas to test though, so I'll post back in case anyone's curious about the result.