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C
CHRISTINA G
Participating Frequently
September 21, 2017
Question

Red Crop Marks - Saving PDF in AI

  • September 21, 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 1843 views

Occasionally, crop marks print red instead of black. This does not show up in the PDF preview or when it is printed on a regular, office printer; however, it shows up after printing via Fiery software using a Vutek large format printer.

The crop marks are controlled by a PDF preset we have for samples. I have checked over the settings there and have reviewed the settings in Fiery and nothing seems to change the red crop marks to registration black.

I feel that this is a printing error rather than a software setting or malfunction (the print shop manager disagrees). Are there any settings in Illustrator - when saving a PDF - that could affect the color of the crop marks? Does anyone have experience with this issue?

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3 replies

C
CHRISTINA GAuthor
Participating Frequently
January 2, 2018

Thank you to everyone that responded! I am impressed with the in-depth replies that I received and am grateful for all information provided. Recently, we replaced our old Vutek printer with a Vutek GS2000 LX Pro. This was a two-week transition period that included training in use of the new printer and its accompanying software.

We have been using the new printer for a few weeks now and the red crop marks have yet to show up. I asked the individuals training us whether this was caused by the printer or by my creative software and they said that it was most likely caused by the printer and - if the marks show red or another color again - we need to re-calibrate our printer.

During the time that we had the old printer, I made due by removing crop mark settings from my PDF and applying crop marks only through the printing software (Fiery XF) and this seemed to fix the issue for awhile. <--- Just mentioning this in case someone else is experiencing issues similar to mine and needs a quick fix (it worked for me anyway)

As for the spot color that I had mentioned, it was present because we have a spot color in our logo and our logo is on the samples that we send out (again though, the issue for us was not the Pantone color but actually the printer needing re-calibrating).

    Mike_Gondek10189183
    Community Expert
    Mike_Gondek10189183Community Expert
    Community Expert
    September 21, 2017

    My guess is that crop marks are being enabled by the pdf setting here.

    That would mean you crop marks are set to registration color in your swatches palette.

    How do you print to the Vutek printer do you drag and drop PDFs to a queue. Your post leads me to believe this is not an Illustrator problem, but your software that processes .pdfs. Maybe you have cloudburst software or similar, and a spot color definition where the cyan and black are missing from registration color?

    C
    CHRISTINA GAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    September 22, 2017

    Yes, for our samples the crop marks are set by selecting "trim marks" under "Marks and Bleeds" when saving as a PDF.

    I checked the swatches: crop marks are set to registration black in AI. There are also two Pantone color swatches: one is Rubine Red, the other is grey. However, the crop marks are not set to Rubine Red so I don't think that is affecting it.

    We print everything via Fiery XF by opening Fiery and importing PDFs into the software, this exports the file as an RTL to a folder labelled "Output" and then that file has to manually be moved over to a folder labelled "Import" in order for the print shop manager to open the file on his end.

    I have reviewed all of the Fiery XF settings and crop marks were disabled for this sample (this is normal since crop marks are set via custom PDF preset).

    Mike_Gondek10189183
    Community Expert
    Mike_Gondek10189183Community Expert
    Community Expert
    September 22, 2017

    First I want to clarify that the registration color is not black. Looks black, but registration is actually a combination of all your colors channels. Since you say you have Rhubine red and grey, sounds like your fiery FX is doing something different than printing a composite directly for illustrator which includes CMYK regardless of if those ink are sued in a document.

    This does not appear to be an illustrator issue,  but more of a fiery FX issue. Willing to  help, but you would need to post some screenshot form the fiery fx for me to be able to assist better.

    Can I ask why  crop marks being red is an issue, as with red I owl think that is enough to trim your print.

    Is this consistent that certain documents get red crop marks, and certain ones print rich black? If so what is common about the ones the print red trim marks?

    Monika Gause
    Community Expert
    Monika GauseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    September 21, 2017

    Gregrt  schrieb

    Are there any settings in Illustrator - when saving a PDF - that could affect the color of the crop marks?

    No, there aren't. At least not when you don't fiddle with the Ink Manager settings (and those would affect everything else in the PDF, not just the crop marks)

    Only when you create your own crop marks with whatever color you mixed yourself, this might happen.

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