KB285558554: Print Control Wizard - How to combine LEN or TIFF files (charts from PCW 20.x) to add your own images

Description

In Print Control Wizard 20.x, you can now choose to save your charts as TIFF or LEN. In some cases, you would like to edit these charts and add your own images or marks. This article describes how to edit these charts and what to take into account when editing.

Procedure

Use case

The charts from Print Control Wizard 20.x (Color Pilot 20) have a fixed size and cannot be changed. It could also be you want to add your own images or marks in an Editor.

In v20, you can now save to TIFF next to LEN, and split up the charts. The v20 charts for Flexibles and Labels are also 4-color. Below is described how to handle these charts in an Editor.

Which Editor to use?

LEN files are not supported in ArtPro+ or Adobe^® Illustrator^®. LEN is an Esko format and only supported in PackEdge.

But in Color Pilot v20 (Printing Conditions), you can save the chart as TIFF.

You could place these TIFFs in ArtPro+ or or Adobe^® Illustrator^®, but it's more convenient to use the 'Create Wrapper File' task in Automation Engine to create a pdf (especially with multicolor charts).

Creating a PDF and editing in ArtPro+ v20 (or other Editor)?

In the Automation Engine Pilot, select your single color or multicolor  TIFF(s), and open the 'Create Wrapper File' ticket. Make sure to switch on the option 'Combine multiple input files (separations) to a single composite wrapper file'.

The result will be a PDF with the TIFF(s) or LEN(s) as external reference.

In ArtPro+ make a new document.

1. Go to File > Place.
2. Select the PDF (created with the 'Create Wrapper File' task) and click Place.
   OR
   Select the single color TIFF file and click Place.
   
   

Make sure you don't scale or transform the placed file, otherwise your Crystal screen patterns will also be transformed.

Place other images or objects according to your needs.

If you use object based screening, make sure you don't apply a 'Surface screening' to the placed file (apply no screendot or a screendot that doesn't contain surface screening).

Below a Screen Set 1 is made with the GVY3 screen (which is a Surface Screen) but this is only applied to the rectangle, not to the placed charts (see 2nd screenshot).

You see that the 1-bit TIFF image (black rectangle) has 'Screen Set 1' applied, with the Dotshape 'GVY3' applied (GVY3 as example, can be used to apply a different surface screening for certain objects). The TIFF chart has no Screen Set applied.

Make sure also to apply the same ruling as the TIFF chart, in this case it was 150 lpi.

Save the file to a PDF or Normalized PDF.

Ripping with Imaging Engine

Screening type

Select your saved PDF and open the Image to Screened Separations ticket. Use the options as shown below.

In the Separations tab, set Use from File to All and then the object based screening from file will be applied. Note that the Default screen does not contain Surface Screening (in this example, the R dot is applied to the TIFF chart image). In the Separations Preview, you only see GVY3 for the black separation (this is currently a limitation of the Imaging Engine supporting PDF+ and screen sets). But the output of the black separation will be correct. The black rectangle will get the GVY3 screen and the placed chart will have the correct Crystal screen.

Transformation - Distortion

In the Imaging Engine task, make sure not to use distortion. Otherwise the P+ microcells will be wrong as the patterns will be distorted.