Unwanted shadows around grapics when printing

[Reeveo237]

I am getting unwanted shadows around grapics when printing. No matter what format of image I paste into a graphics or anchored frame, when I print it out there are hazy shadows around each part of the image particularly for flow chart type images. I am using Frame 2015. Thanks for any advice.

[Bob_Niland]

What app is generating the charts?
How are you saving or capturing them for use in FM?
If through an intermediate file format, which one (and settings thereof)?
If ending up as a raster images, what are the workflow settings for PDF and HTML gen?

A vector image saved as SVG has a chance of surviving into the final document intact. For darn near anything else, you have to understand what's happening to the vectors or pixels at multiple points in the workflow.

What you describe sounds like an image collapse to raster and then compressed with some curve-matching transform, such as the DCT of JPEG.

[Reeveo237]

Hi Bob, Thanks for your reply. I have usually cut and paste JPG or PNG images and have never noticed a problem. It has become apparent since the office replaced the laser printer, so I am trying to eliminate that aspect.

I have not had much luck generating SVG images and as such not been able to use that format to input to FM.  Chart shapes were created in Visio then saved as JPG & PNG

What you suggest in the last line of your communique sounds plausible, as they do pixelate.

These are examples of the images I have used and this morning I did manage an SVG 1.1 image which gave a similar reproduction when printed.

 

[Bob_Niland]

re: It has become apparent since the office replaced the laser printer,...

Did the page description language of the printer change also, perhaps, say, from Postscript to PCL?

Anyway, if Visio can save-as/export vector EPS or vector PDF, you can use another app to convert that to SVG, You could even script and batch this with Adobe Illustrator (or just use the EPS or PDF directly, but SVG is future-proofed for workflow to HTML or XML).

[Reeveo237]

WRT the printer description language, I do not know, but will try to get an answer from our IT guys.

For simplicity, is it easiest to suggest that SVG is the preferred format to upload to FM?  I am working unstructured so conversion  to HTML/XML is not necessary at this stage.

Thanks again.

[Bob_Niland · Accepted solution]

re: For simplicity, is it easiest to suggest that SVG is the preferred format to upload to FM?

Historically, FM was really optimized around EPS (encapsulated Postscript). The legacy workflow destinations were print shops (Postscript), local Postscript printers and PDF (device-independent Postscript).

re: I am working unstructured so conversion  to HTML/XML is not necessary at this stage.

Those two things aren't necessarily related. You can workflow to HTML/XML from structured or unstructured, and structured doesn't necessarily have to flow to HTML/XML.

[Reeveo237]

Thanks for your help Bob, I have our IT department on the case now, although I did import and Copy/Paste an EPS image and they were atrocious! Very grainy in all areas.

[Bob_Niland]

re: ...although I did import and Copy/Paste an EPS image and they were atrocious! Very grainy in all areas.

During edit, draft printing or to PDF?

When working with images that contain (or can contain) a thumbnail image, FM historically displayed the thumbnail during edit, and when printing to devices use PDLs other than Ps (such as HP printers in PCL mode). You would, however, get the full original EPS passed through to Postscript workflows (.ps files, PDFs, and printers in Ps mode).

The reason for this was computer performance in the "old" days. Thumbnails (72 dpi indexed color, basically GIFs) were much faster to display during edit. When I started on FM3, on Windows 3.1, it literally took a half hour to display a page containing an 8x10 24-bit 300dpi TIFF on my PC. EPS of same was prompt (but coarse during edit).

A work-around for the coarse/thumbnail edit problem is to redefine the image size to 400% (without re-sampling) in your image editor, then import. This increases the thumbnail res by 400%, so re-scale at import to 25%. Now add precise callouts & such. 400% is about the limit for this hack.

The 400%/25% hack, however, also explodes the size of the thumbnail metadata, which I used to then remove downstream in an Acrobat Pro batch script.

I don't have any real amount of experience with FM versions that support SVG, so no insights on considerations there.

[Matt S - Tech Comm Tools]

Can you post screenshots of your images?