Topic awaiting preservation: Fuzzy images in Quark

Can anybody out there help? Recently, I find that some images (that look perfectly Ok in Photoshop) when imported into QuarkXpress (I use Quark Mac Version 5), appear fuzzy on the Quark page for no reason. I've done everything to fix it (like changing image size, changing resolution, reloading Quark, even using another Mac), but the same images always appear fuzzy and appear that way in the final press output.

I'm sure others who use Quark may have experienced this. Could you please share your knowledge?
Thanks.

I might be able to help, I gave up on Quark with version 4, but five change very little.

What file form format is the image and what version of Photoshop?

Is it an Image setter, if so what kind of RIP and level of postscript I/II, if digital composite output device, (inkjet, color laser/digital press) what kind and is it postscript.

For file format, unless you need embedded clipping paths, The best format for quark is Tiff. Now it's been a long time, but I believe Adobe changed the tiff standard slightly around the same Photoshop 6 or 7, and Quark 5 Appeared. If I remember correctly it did cause some weird issues with Quark at the time. A search might turn up something.

Just make sure you flatten your Tiffs and make sure no extra channels exist in the image. Avoid JPEG compression. In fact it's best if compression used when dealing with many postscript RIPS, I would only use compress if the tiff is a grayscale or bitmap tiff; and then only LZW. Many older RIP will choke on JPEG compressed image. But this really depends on your equipment and workflow. Some simple testing would resolve what you can and can't supple to the RIP.

Quark doesn?t really show you the actual image on screen it's simply a proxy image. It may be that Quark is generating proxy, from the tiffs preview image and not the actual high-res data.

So when Quark collects and embeds the high-res's prior to writing postscript to the print driver. Quark, simply supplies the preview image instead of the actual high-res.

J. Stuart J.

(Edited by jstuartj on 07-31-2004 05:47)

You are probably right J.S.J. -- Quark is somehow supplying the preview image instead of the actual high-res in these cases. You asked about output: these images print perfectly well on a laser printer, but I work for a magazine, and the images appear blurred in the magazine or in a digital proof made from the postscript file. Although, as you point out, Quark shows only a proxy image on the screen, the bad ones tend to be comparatively fuzzier even on the screen, if you look carefully. They don't look fuzzy though (on the screen), if you increase document size (but not dpi) in Photoshop and reduce the image size on importing in the Quark picture frame.

It's my weekend, so I'll have to get back to office Monday before I'm able to try out all the other things you suggest. Thanks indeed.
m.s.

I think it has to be something with the tiff it's self. Likely layers as I did a little search and found that Quark 5.01 passport ed. doesn't like layers.

A few other things to check, just to be safe.

Check that the image is not index color. I saw this when I did catalog work, when designers grabed screen shots from games and websites. On our rips they simply printed in the black plate however.

Odd characters or spaces in the name could cause linking problems. This wouldn't have an effect on the screen display but could at a windows or unix based RIP.

Here is another resource you could try: http://www.prepressforums.com/

Let us know how it turns out.

J. Stuart J.

Thanks again, JSJ. We solved the problem -- it had to do with the Mac used. I had that machine changed, and only today we confirmed there are no more fuzzy pix after we got the press proofs. We copied no data from the old Mac, which must have had some corrupt system or other software files. Looks like you're an expert in this area. I was too busy meeting a deadline to check out all your last suggestions, but I'm going to look at all those points you wrote too.
-- m.s. in Bombay, India.