trouble printing pdf's I've made out of scribus documents

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Piet Van Meerbeek

Hello, I started to work with scribus 1.4 recently and I've made a comic strip.
But... I have trouble printing the pdf's I make out of scribus files. On the screen the PDF's are fine and even when I print them at home they come out OK. But when I print them in a copy shop some illustrations appear to be missing on paper.

I already made them all over again in scribus but even then sometimes they show the same problem.

I'm rather desperate. I need to print this document quite regularly. What do I do wrong? How can I solve this problem?

Thank you.

Piet

GarryP

Piet, this sounds like an odd problem that I've not heard about before. It's got me stumped but I don't send much to be printed externally nowadays.

It might help someone else to diagnose what's wrong if you can supply the following details:
* What PDF version are you exporting to?
* When exporting are you embedding PDF/EPS files? (This is an experimental feature.)
* What output type did you use when exporting? (E.g. Screen/Web, Printer, Greyscale?)
* What compression options did you use?
* What type(s) of illustrations are missing? (E.g. Only SVGs? Only PNGs? etc.)
* Are the missing illustrations on the same layer as other stuff which is correctly printed?
* What software is being used to print at the copy shop? (And does it have any limitations?)

And two other things which probably aren't relevant but might be worth looking at are:
* Are the missing illustrations single-colour or multi-coloured?
* Have you got colour management on or off? (If on, what settings have you used?)
I only suggest these last two as you may be using a colour which the copy shop printer can't print - but in these modern times the probability of that is very small, if not zero, in most cases. (I sort of remember talking to someone about this 20+ years ago, but I can't be sure. I thought I'd throw it into the pot in case it rang a bell with someone.)

I've no idea if any of this will help someone else to help you but it's best to provide all the info you can, especially when the problem is strange.

I hope you find a solution.

Wena

I would ask the copy shop (if your output is in color) is his printer a CMYK or RGB?
Wena

Nermander

I'd add that for missing images there are two major possible causes: Transparencies and memory problems (low memory in the printer).

Piet Van Meerbeek

Hello, thanks for your answers. That's a lot of questions and I don't know if I'm able to answer them all but I'll do my best.

First this: my images are all in black and white.

-  What output type did you use when exporting? --> Cute pdf printer 3.0. And previously I have used 995 software with the same result, I think. Is that what you mean?
- So actually I'm not exporting but printing as pdf. And I don't know what type of PDF's that gives.
- What type(s) of illustrations are missing? --> they are all TIFFs
- What compression options --> No compression.
- Are the missing illustrations on the same layer as other stuff which is correctly printed? --> Yes.
- What software is being used to print at the copy shop? (And does it have any limitations?) --> I don't know. I can ask.

Thank you.

Piet


Piet Van Meerbeek

Oh yes, and to answer this other remark, about transparencies and memory problems (low memory in the printer).
--> I haven't used transparencies.
--> And when it comes to memory... Would that be the memory of my PC when printing to pdf? Or the memory in the copy shop? I must say that the guy in the copy shop complained a bit about the size of the document.

Piet

utnik

hello piet

Quote from: Piet Van Meerbeek on May 16, 2013, 05:16:50 PM--> Cute pdf printer 3.0.

- So actually I'm not exporting but printing as pdf...

you should export your .pdf files – that's what scribus has been developed for!

utnik

Nermander

Quote from: Piet Van Meerbeek on May 16, 2013, 05:20:34 PM
Or the memory in the copy shop?

The memory in the printer (not in the computer).

A PDF can be seen as a vector document, but when printed the printer must rasterize it. If the document contains a lot of data the printer might run out of memory and fail to rasterize parts of the document. If the printer is correctly set up it should issue a warning or error message in such cases, but it might be that the staff in the print shop doesn't have enough knowledge on this stuff and just ignores the error message.

Did the PDF show correctly on screen at the print shop? In that case, tell them that if they can't print the PDF as it shows on screen you will have to go to another, more professional, print shop.

Piet Van Meerbeek

Wonderfull. Thank you all for your help. I will try to export first then. And I will bear in mind the info about the memory of the printer.

Bye

Piet