Can't print Color Charts from IllustratorCS

[bpatrick3]

Has anyone had a problem printing the Pantone charts out of Illustrator CS.
I downloaded the charts from this site and when I open them in CS it askes to update them(have seen this hundreds of times) So I update them like all of my older Illustrator files, I proceed to print them, It acts like it is going to print and then a dialog appears "unable to print Illustration" that's it.
I have tried restarting,resaving,placing the chart instead of opening it, I even when back and printed something that printed fine yesterday and it printed with no problem. One final note was that I did get it to print out of Illustrator version 10(maybe it is having a problem updating correct?) I would rather print them out of CS. Maybe it does not matter what version they are printed out of as long as the color space is the same. Just wanted to bounce this off you guys.

[eye4clr]

I'm reaching here - no idea if it will work....

Try opening them in Acrobat Pro. Ya never know the wonder that PDF can work.

[eye4clr]

Wait a minute. It just occured to me; why print from Illustrator instead of just opening directly in the RIP?

Not to say that it will work, but why bother with Illustrator print dialog when you can go directly into the RIP?

[bpatrick3]

My goal is to print them out of Illustrator CS with my setting the same way that I will be designing ei.color mode as cmyk and the color space as SWOP so that I know for sure that I am matching apples to apples, I do believe that CS is having trouble updating the file because I got it to print fine out of Illustrator 10.

BTW,Eye4color
I have been meaning to ask you. Do you import photos to Illustrator as RGB or CMYK, Even though I work in Illustrator in CMYK mode I have found that using RGB photos embedded with sRGB works great. I then print with rendering intent as colormetric for both photos and vector (this is photoprint server printing to HP Designjet-I just got my 540V so I don't know what my settings will be with Versaworks) Thanks for your input, I have learned alot by following your posts.

[eye4clr]

Thanks for the kind words.

You can bring either into Illustrator. But there are nuance differneces with the avenue you bring the image in with. The best bet is have the Illustrator file match the raster color space for simplicity.

sRGB gets a lot of abuse. Newby color geeks often evangalize AdobeRGB as being "better". The key question is - what is the image as it comes to you? Does it come to you as sRGB or something else? This is what you need to know. Go to your color settings in all your adobe apps and check on all those color policy boxes and have it set to Preserve Embedded Profiles or somethign to that effect. This way the apps will flag you and make you aware of what you are opening. When you get confronted with a dialog asking you how you want to handle a Profile Mismatch - choose to Convert to Your Working Space for safety and simplicty.

Flexi by default is AdobeRGB and US Web Coated SWOP. This doesn't match the defaults of the Adobe apps - they are all sRGB and US Web Coated SWOP on a fresh install. Ya gotta get em all to agree. When in doubt, just set them all to AdobeRGB and US Web Coated SWOP.

Flexi is kind of a pain on this. It only lets you setup 1 workflow for input profiles. Wasatch does the same. So, if you want to accomodate different RGB spaces on the input, you've got to constantly be changing the setting - not fun. Onyx allows Quicksets that control the color management amoung lots of other things. You can have as many as you're willing to automate your workflow.

I just spent 15 hours travelling to Barcelona and got a good head start on writing an article for this site on just this subject. I hope to finish on the way home.

[bpatrick3]

Funny you should mention using AdobeRGB, because for years that is what I would always use for RGB photos and ya know it only took that one pain in the a** job to convince me that sRGB was better -I will go back to AdobeRGB. I Know exactly what you mean with profile mismatch and will impliment. Thanks again,look forward to your artical.

[GB2]

I'm having the same problem trying to print the downloaded Pantone Coated Color Chart as described in the first post. Can anyone help with a solution to get it to print?

[GB2]

Anyone? Anyone have any idea how to get the chart to print out of Illustrator CS?

[Ron Helliar]

I've done what you are trying to do with both CS & CS2. But to Onyx from a mac platform and worked fine. Your methodology has merit also, but you may have a corrupt file, Illy or bug somewhere. Best to find a clean copy of the chart then start troubleshooting programs & files.

[Chuck12563]

I believe that the only thing that CS wants to update is what it calls "legacy type"--live fonts in old illustrator files.

Convert all of the fonts to outlines and it should print fine.

I took a peek at one of the Pantone to Process color charts that are posted here and saw that they were created with Illustrator Version 8. If you are using any version of Illustrator greater than 8 (such as CS1,2or3) you are better off making your own color charts as the CMYK values for PMS colors used in Illustrator 8 do not always match the values used in newer versions of Illustrator. Pantone changed the conversion values starting with (I believe) Illustrator 9.