"Diamond" fill effect displaying successive rectangles instead of starburst effect

[Advocate]

I'm creating cards for different decks. What the printer gets and what I get are two totally different things. This card (.xar file attached), has been designed with the diamond fill. I got poor results when I exported the .xar file itself to PDF format.

So I exported the .xar file as a 300dpi png, and next exported the PNG file to PDF, using Xara DP6 program. Turned out exactly as I want it. File attached for anyone who wants to see.

So, I send the PNG file to the printer. He exports it to Adobe Illustrator, and it comes back with rectangles instead of the subtle starburst effect. I have four card designs that use this diamond effect, and they all do the same thing. His PDF file is too large to attach here because there are 11 card samples on it and it's 860kb. So I'm attaching a screenshot of how the red card turned out when he exported the PNG file to PDF. I'm also attaching a screenshot of the blue card, where you see the rectangles are quite prominently displayed.

(Sorry about the blue card image being so large; I was working with Photoshop Elements and must have forgotten to resize.)

Two questions:
1 - Does anyone know what the heck the problem is?
2 - I told him I could export the cards to PDF and send them instead of PNGs, but haven't heard back. Does anyone have experience with taking a PDF export from Xara and using it in an Adobe Illustrator template?

I hope that all makes sense. Any helpful advice is most welcome. I'll check back later tonight. TIA

[ShapeShifter]

Remember, bevel effects and other native Xara effects are always converted to bitmap. So avoid using them for work which needs to go to PDF and to printers, instead build your bevels and other effects from vectors.

[gwpriester]

When you export a PNG or TIFF or PDF file, your image is converted to a bitmap. If the bitmap looks OK when you view it, then this is what your printer should see.

When I export your XAR file from Designer Pro 7 to Photoshop PSD, the transition looks fine but the number is not exporting. Even though I have selected it. I would put all your objects on the same layer if you are exporting to PSD.

PDF is Illustrator's native file format. I opened your file in Illustrator CS5.5 and it looks fine. I wonder if your printer is using an old version of Illustrator. Probably.

[Advocate]

Thanks for the replies. I moved the number to the same layer as the other elements, even though the image won't be exported to PSD. The numbers were converted to shapes, so it's odd that it didn't export.

I looked at the Properties on the PDF and it doesn't indicate which Illustrator version the printer used to export the PDF; all it indicates is that it's an Adobe Acrobat document. In mid July I asked the printer, "How do you create images for printing?" His response was, "We will take whatever files you send, create templates in Illustrator and then save them as .pdf files."

It sounds to me like you were actually able to open the .xar file in Illustrator, or was it the PDF file that you opened in Illustrator? I'm attaching the PNG image. Could you test opening it in Illustrator and then exporting it to PDF, just as the printer did? If you get the rectangles instead of the starburst effect, then I don't know what to do. I'm sitting here wondering what's the point of having special effects if you can't use them. I don't know how else to duplicate that "starburst" look. It's very subtle, but it keeps it from looking like an ordinary flat fill.

If the printer will take PDF files, then I guess the problem is solved, at least as far as some of my cards are concerned. But still I'd like to know what's causing the diamond fill effect to deteriorate.

TIA

Edit to add: I exported the PNG to PDF. Looks just like I want it to. Then I imported that PDF into Xara and exported it to PDF format. So it's a PDF from a PDF. I printed it. Result: no rectangles, but now the colors are off; the fill is more brown, looks dull, and the ring around the white center has too much magenta. You can't really see what I mean in the attached PDF until it's printed.

So if I give PDFs to the printer, does that mean I have to re-do all the colors to get the brightness level back in the colors? (It took a long time and a lot of effort and experimentation to get the colors just right.) Do I just forsake the diamond fill effect for now, settle for something I don't want, and buy/learn Illustrator for future projects? It seems that's where things are headed. I'm 3 weeks away from deadline and very discouraged.

Advice, anyone?

[ShapeShifter]

Simply put, PDF files are nothing more than a portable container (Portable Document Format) - simply saving a PNG to PDF doesn't give it any magical or vector properties, it's just a PDF which contains a bitmap (the PNG).

That said, I have attached your 300ppi PNG saved as PDF 1.3 in AI
(A bitmap in a PDF container.) No banding. Nice a clean.

I'm sitting here wondering what's the point of having special effects if you can't use them.

You can use them, but understand that some of the LE's and other features are Xara specific, so they have to be converted to non-scalable bitmaps in order for other software to be and to render them as you expect to see them.
This is no different to Xara not being able to deal with some propriety features from other software.

If you are printing directly from Xara, then there's no issue at all, you can use all any effect LE's without concern.
Converting from one vector format to another has always been a pain.

[Advocate]

Thanks, ShapeShifter! I downloaded your PDF and printed it. Nice to know that there's no banding (thanks for helping me with the right terminology), but what's odd is that the color is much brighter than the PDF results I get from Xara. However, I like it, definitely.

Your result begs the question, then: Why do you get a clean result, and the printer gets banding? Isn't PDF 1.3 an across-the-board format in all versions of AI?

By the way, the printer is a large operation, they print hundreds of thousands of cards, so I'm just going to assume their Illustrator version is fairly up-to-date.

ShapeShifter, you've given me hope. Thanks.

Anyone else want to comment, please do. The more knowledge I have, the better.

TIA

[gwpriester]

First off, no Illustrator cannot open a XAR file. But if you export your document as PDF then Illustrator can open your file. And Designer Pro 6 and 7 do a pretty decent job converting any special effects into bitmaps on export so they come into Illustrator intact.

I have worked with commercial printers since I started in advertising in 1967. Sadly, over the years, as the computer has taken hold and more designers are doing their own pre-press, the knowledge and expertise has gone downhill for many the medium to small printing firms. The craft of printing is being lost.

There is no reason why a printing company cannot work with a good high resolution 24-bit PNG or TIFF image. Exporting these images into PDF format is unnecessary and does not add anything to the output. Unless you are using lots of text or vector objects, in which case the text (if it is not copyrighted and can be embedded) and your vector objects will only be rasterized once.

The printer may have to place your image into their printing template, but this is something the printer should do. Not you. Also, I prefer to let the printer convert RGB to CMYK because many of them have conversion formulas that have been developed for their specific printers.

[Advocate]

Good morning. The printer will be placing the image(s) into their printing template, so yes, they're taking care of that part of it. I'm now wondering if the banding is something peculiar in their PDF output process, but of course that really doesn't make any sense, does it?

I'm exporting the PNG as TrueColor+Alpha, 32-bit. Would that make any difference? I tested just now with exporting a PNG at True Color 24-bit, 300 dpi, and really didn't notice anything had changed, except maybe the color was a bit toned down, but that might be the lighting in my office this morning.

I also imported their PDF into Xara, "optimized for editing." I noticed in the layers that the images are all designated Photo "JPEG from PDF1" (300 dpi). So it looks like they exported/saved the PNG as a JPG and then put that in their template ....?? Would that cause such a poor result?

I'm attaching the .xar file, if anyone wants to look at it and give their opinion. You can see the banding clearly on the numbered cards. And of course when I exported it to PDF, the banding remains.

Thanks again for any follow-up advice. There is a solution, somehow, some way.