MacPro from Whoas to Woes

[Craig B]

So late last week we upgraded our Macs at work to Dual-Dual core 2.66 Ghz, 4GB Ram.

I got one of our team set up, everything seemed great until she tried creating a PDF (or viewing with high quality display) an 8 page InDesign file with 5 placed .eps files in it. It would either crash or say "out of memory" and crash, or say "out of memory" and create a corrupt PDF file that couldn't be opened.

Great. So, digging around online I discovered that InDesign CS2 apparently doesn't like .eps files. Oops. Slight problem.

So, has anyone else experienced that and had good success with any workarounds? I've found suggestion for saving the .eps files in another format, but even .ai and .pdf don't work ... and I don't want to rasterize them.

And upgrading to CS3 apparently fixes it (??) but I'm not sure if I can talk my manager into doing that after he just shelled out upgrading to 6 MacPros.

[doubting_thomas]

I upgraded to CS3 a couple of days after getting my MacPro. I don't remember
having a crash when previewing a placed .eps file in CS2. I've never seen that
with CS3 on the MP either.

[BJMRGTIVR6]

nobody at my work has experienced that. we use CS2. and i place EPS and AI files all teh time in them.

i am using a G5 box and a couple of co-workers are using Intels but nothing like your experience. and we might 'just' have 2-3 GB Ram.

[Craig B]

DT, that's good to know. We haven't completely ruled out moving to CS3, we're just trying to soften the financial burden, so to speak.

The odd thing is it appears to be certain .eps files, and I'm not sure why. There's nothing in particular (that I can identify) that makes them any more unique than other .eps files that work fine.

[hewligan]

Have you tried resaving the eps files that are causing the problems using the new machines? It's one of those things where, sure, in theory it shouldn't make a difference, but in practice it often does.

[CkretAjint]

Trash your Illy preferences and save it again and try importing it again...

[jimking]

I've heard of this before. Look closely at your Indy Prefs. Try trashing Indy's Preference file and restart, tone down opened fonts. Its something simple.

[urstwile]

Is it possible that the way the EPS files' preview is saved is what's causing the problem?

[Craig B]

I'll tyr to answer everyone's questions suggestions.

JimKing: Fonts, I hope, aren't; the issue. We're a corporate group and we only have 3 other font families loaded other than the defaults that come loaded on the machine ... also , all the fonts have been converted to outlines on the offending .eps files.

Hewligan: Yes, we tried resaving them in multiple methods, flattening them, different color spaces, different preview options, etc. Still causing problems unfortunately.

CkretAgent: Haven't tried that but I will.

Urstwile: Possibly, but if that is the issue we haven't found using any of the preview options to fix the problem.

Thanks for all the suggestions and ideas.

Poking around on the internet discovered some interesting solutions. 1 is that distilling a .ps file from the InDesign file works fine (or printing to PDF apparently works), it's just a little annoying to go those routes. I know that doesn't add too much extra to the mix, but it does add an extra step or two from simply exporting a PDF.

I'm off to see what happens with trashing the prefs.

[jimking]

In Indy I have found that exporting as a pdf (you have more control) instead of printing to pdf works much better.

[doubting_thomas]

CraigB, are the .eps files DCS files? The other thing that I thought of from
jimking's post is checking the prefs to make sure that the Prefer PDF
when placing/pasting files. It's under the Clipboard Handling tab.

DCS files are lame.

[Craig B]

Dt, definitely not DCS files.

And I did change the prefer PDF for placing/clipboard ... whatever it was. I also trashed the prefs, and it's still acting up with SOME .eps files (not all).

For the time being having some watched folders and using distiller seems to be working, but it's a pain. I was just hoping someone out there might have been through this and had the "magic button" so to speak (you know ... the "uncheck such and such box" and it would work.) Oh well.

Thanks again.