Printing jagged linework on some objects but not others

JBeez99

New Member
Hi There,

I have recently illustrated a book cover (purley in photoshop and indesign) and have just received a sample print of the cover from a digital printers.

I have two characters on the cover one has printed with smooth linework the other with jagged linework. Nothing has been scaled up (the character with jagged linework has however been scaled down in indesign - keeping proportions). Both characters were illustrated the same way in photoshop and both characters use the same CMYK for the black lines.

If I print the characters on my own home printer (which is a basic HP Envy) all linework is smooth and on screen all linework looks smooth.

I am interested to know whether this is likely an issue with digital print company's print setup or my own file output.

Any advise would be most appreciated.

Many thanks
Jon
 
It could be a few things.

If you made an amendment to your artwork outside of InDesign - then the link wouldn't be updated - and you'd need to update your link.
If you export a PDF from InDesign without the proper link updated then you export the Proxy Image that is insitu and not the actual artwork.

However, that's just a guess.

Other things would be resolution - I wrote an article on this before - https://indesignsecrets.com/high-res-image-look-low-res.php

Effective PPI of an image makes a difference - hugely.


It all depends - send me the PDF that went to print and I'll tell you exactly what happened.
 
It could be a few things.

If you made an amendment to your artwork outside of InDesign - then the link wouldn't be updated - and you'd need to update your link.
If you export a PDF from InDesign without the proper link updated then you export the Proxy Image that is insitu and not the actual artwork.

However, that's just a guess.

Other things would be resolution - I wrote an article on this before - https://indesignsecrets.com/high-res-image-look-low-res.php

Effective PPI of an image makes a difference - hugely.


It all depends - send me the PDF that went to print and I'll tell you exactly what happened.
Hi Hankscorpio, thank you very much for the reply.

InDesign is showing no linking errors. I have attached the PDF as requested (I had to remove most of the content to reduce the file size so I could attach it below). The character with jagged edges is the main green creature at the front (the other characters behind the green one were smooth - they were also placed from one single psd so I counted them as one character in my original post).

Many thanks
Jon
 

Attachments

  • cover-print-test2.pdf
    713.4 KB · Views: 5
Can you show me a photo of the book and the image that isn't showing correctly?
I have attached an photo as requested. You can see the line quality of the green character on the left compared to the magenta character (especially around the eyes).
jagged-close-up.jpg
 
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