Acrobat & printing Extensis Portfolio galleries

[Hardhat@adobeforums.com]

A wierd one this but, bear with me...

We regularly print Extensis Portfolio galleries (ie: sub-sections of our main image catalogues) to Acrobat PDFs using Acrobat Professional 7.0.8. Machines used are all G5 quads with 4 GB of RAM.

A typical gallery may consist of anywhere between 10 and 130 images. To those familair with Portfolio printing our chosen options are 'current gallery view' (ie: 9-up thumnails per page with descriptive info underneath) and 'use originals on disk' Good (fastest).

Individual image files in each gallery are max quality JPEGs, ranging in size from 17-120mb in size.

This means that the average size of a postscript file could be anywhere from 170MB -2.5GB in size.

All has gone well until the 7.0.8 update (so we think) was installed and now we seem to be getting images dropping out of the last few pages of 10 pages-or-more long PDFs. All that remains is the thumbnail container and the text 'Image Not Available'. It's as if the amount of data required to be collected is too much for the PDF print option.

This has never, previously, been a problem for us.

If we split long galleries in two, both smaller galleries print perfectly. A rough rule of thumb is 60 images (ie: 5-6pages) maximum before the problem occurs.

Is this some kind of cacheing issue. Or is it nothing to do with Acrobat and could be a Portfolio-only issue?

Any solutions / suggestions appreciated!

Luv Hardhat

[Hardhat@adobeforums.com]

Without wishing to bump my own thread; but as I still have the same problem and no replies:

Right then...

Well, it's not a networking issue (which I thought may have been a possibility).

I copied 105 JPEGS (totalling 1.8GB) to a desktop folder, created a local catalogue, and printed that to a 12 page Acrobat PDF.

Same thing happened: pages 1-8 are as they should be (ie: all images in place); last 2 images of page 9 are replaced with "image not available" place holder text, as are all the images on pages 1-12.

Anyone got any further thoughts on this? I'm also posting these question to the Extensis forums.

I'll keep plugging away on some different options and see what happens.

Any and all help appreciated.

Cheers

Hardhat

[Mark_Larsen@adobeforums.com]

hardhat, i don't have the time to check from portfolio but have seen similar problems with a 2 gig limit on postscript files (quark does this). Were you able to exceed this before the update?

[Hardhat@adobeforums.com]

Hi Mark

Yes we were.

Because of the frequency of recent Acrobat updates, it's difficult for us to determine exactly which update this may be linked to, but we're assuming it's either the 0.7 or 0.8 updates.

Regards

Hardhat

[Hardhat@adobeforums.com]

Actually I'm just wondering if the issue is Acrobat-related, or MAC OS-related: ie: is the 2GB PostScript limit an inherrent rule of the OS that we were 'accidentally' getting away with before?

Regards

Hardhat

[Aandi_Inston@adobeforums.com]

Some types of filesystem limit files to 2GB. From memory, HFS and
FAT32 do, while HFS+ and NTFS do not. Network file sharing may add its
own limitations.

Aandi Inston

[Hardhat@adobeforums.com]

Hi Aandi

We're running from Xserves to our G5s, all of which are HFS+ formatted.

As indicated, we don't think this a network issue (we've already tested locally on our own desktops and got the same result).

Regards

M

[pjonesCET@adobeforums.com]

Maybe its not that at all but you don't have enough Real Ram or enough room on your Hard Drive for Scratch disk with large enough Contingous(?) space (Meaning enough continous un brokeken, unfragmented space).

[Hardhat@adobeforums.com]

Hi PJ

Again this is a relatively recent problem.

As spec'd all machines have 4 GB of RAM and - as a server based group - we have very little actually stored on our individual workstations. We also regularly run disk tools to fix permissions and check hard drive integrity.

This problem has occurred on all the G5s I've tested.

Thanks for the input though.

Hardhat

[MarkATS@adobeforums.com]

So, do these same galleries print correctly to a PostScript laser printer? i.e. no missing images? If you create a .ps file and distill, do you get the same results?

[Hardhat@adobeforums.com]

Hi Mark

The laser printer option I can't check (we just don't have one), but the .ps + Distiller I can check.

I'll do so Monday and post the results.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Hardhat : )

[Hardhat@adobeforums.com]

Right then:

Created a .ps from the selected Portfolio gallery. This was 3.6 GB in size.

Dropped this into Distiller.

failed in the same way.

Any thoughts?

:)

[MarkATS@adobeforums.com]

Yeah, the images aren't making it in to the PostScript stream. It's an Extensis issue, not an Acrobat one.

[pjonesCET@adobeforums.com]

One Reasons (adding to one of Aandi's answers) Apple changed from HFS to HFS+ was to get away from That 2 gb file size limit.

Some Laser Printers, and even some certain InkJet Printer have the ability to have RAM Added.

Perhaps either the computers or the Printer need additional memory or the computers Need additional RAM.

For example, on either my Desktop (having 1.5 GB System RAM) or my Laptop Having 2 gb System RAM. Unless the application I was using was setup to create a Cache Disk on Hard Drive, and The had enough contingous free space. There is no way they could handle that large of files. Now the G5 that Use matched Pair RAM can take up to 8 GB. I don't know about the New MacTel machines whether they will get that high or ever need that much.

A Thought:

Could you divide the job in half. create two PDF's then go to Edit Menu then to Merge Files and merge one into the other.

[Hardhat@adobeforums.com]

Hi chaps,

Thanks for the feedback.

PJ: I've got another 2GB of RAM on order, not for this but for PhotoShop. I'll see if it makes any difference.

Also, although we can split the jobs and we know that will work, we have to try and find a solution because we churn dozens of these PDFs out, day-in, day-out.

As posted previously, this never used to happen. But trying to identify why is a real bugger!

I'm gonna cross-post to the Extensis Forums and see what the reaction is.

Thanks for everything.

Luv Hardhat :)