Orienteering NZ Wiki

I'm not sure that a printing log will help as much as a free-form discussion. Usually there is some apparently innocuous change from the regular way of doing things that is the culprit, and almost by definition it won't be one of the standard items in the log. It needs to be drawn out of those involved, a process not unlike pulling teeth. Who prepared the files for Kawakawa and are you reading this forum?

Its the same thing that happened to the naseby relay map Michael. Did you ever find out the problem? People need to find out what not to do.

We didn't manage to complete the extraction on that occasion Paul. Without seeing the Kawakawa map, a topic of interest could be rasterisation of the pdf. But surely not, after all the discussion we've had.

Can't say I noticed any fuzzyness on the Kawakawa map (maybe my oxygen debt naturally compensated for it) but the greens struck me as a bit odd - the 'walk' green in particular looks not far removed from the OOB olive, whereas to my eye they normally look quite different. Paul, don't worry about scaring people, it was an epic - mostly in a good way.

I thought the green showed up as grey looking, but worse for me was the patches of white could not be seen on the map. Was a good fun area, though, and reminded me of Pollock and Awhitu, those tough 80's maps we used to run/walk on.

I prepared the maps Michael.

In this instance the maps were exported from OCAD11 as PDFs (and don't contain any raster images). Printed using the same settings as the Thames Sprint map and NZSS maps (hence the comparison above). So I think it will come down to CMYK colour settings in the OCAD map file, how the printer processes each colour or white paper vs waterproof paper. Here's one of the maps if anyone wants to test on a different paper/printer setup: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7zJEhgtvr8Mb0pLbWtsZ2lCVUU/view?usp=sharing

Yep, no sign of any rasterisation is there? (On Naseby there was rasterisation of the map but not the course markings, which suggested the course planning software). So the difference occurred after you sent the files to the printer? Same printer, same printer management software, not outsourced due to high workload? No doubt you've been down this track?

A different topic, but I switched on overprint preview in Adobe Reader and - green streams. My experience is that the printer management software might or might not obey the overprint settings in the pdf - and looking at the jpg versions on DOMA it seems perhaps not. Though I don't know the process for getting the maps into DOMA.

Martin - I printed the map on my printer and get good results on both Teslin and 140gm white. Difference between those two is only that the Teslin is slightly off white, all other colours register the same.

Similarities to the actual map (I got a fresh one out of the start box after my race) are the yellow and brown are identical. Blue is a darker shade overall and greens look a little too grey to me on the actual map. I thought for a brief moment that one patch of green was bare rock during the race. The greyish green is especially obvious in the gully in the south most portion of the map and just above the not mapped area (larger areas).

I thought the map was quite good overall though - except that the contour lines may have been too close together

I'll leave the maps in my bag so anyone who's interested can have a look if you see me at a race.

I realise now that I have a preconception that “fuzziness” was the main problem (well it does come up quite often!) But the only post-printing maps I have seen are on DOMA and they were presumably scanned. I'd better wait till I see Dwayne with his bag:-)) Or pop round to the Robertsons.

Kawakawa file supplied 100% isom2000. Brand new ocad 11 nothing altered. So it is in the suply to printer or the printer itself. ===

Finally got back to civilisation after living in some ex shearer's quarters for a couple of weeks. I too tried your pdf's on my home inkjet Martin.

The file had the 'Simulate Overprint' box checked. Printing confirmed that it overprinted blue/purple/brown/black. Repeated the print just unchecking the 'Simulate Overprint' and it all came out great, with blue looking more blue. So as Michael has found, the new ocad appears to have a default overprint selected which ALWAYS has to be either turned off completely or refined if some overprint (not blue) is desired. Also the maps looked fantastic and sharp, with the colours looking great. The fuzziness in my opinion comes just down to the quality of the printer after viewing the actual final maps, it wasn't as poor as the online digitised one's looked although we do need to find the highest possible dpi printers if we want the best results.

There were some interesting consequences on my overprinted sample, provided the Blue overprint is unchecked in the map/colours menus then either normal or overprinted looked good with for and against depending on individual taste. Brown - goes darker over green and blue which can enhance things. Blue - Much better when unchecked. No greenish blue over yellow. Purple - the most common use for overprint, both versions looked good. We need more of a consensus on best practice. …and then there were a few strange consequences of the 'overprint' selected as follows; Semi open yellow came out better on the overprint version, the white dots shrunk a little giving a much better result. Green, strangely, was effected also. The vertical line symbols became slightly thinner.

There's some discussion of the Kawakawa Bay map printing (Auck Champs) in the mapping thread. It seems sensible to spin off printing matters to this more specific thread.

To recap, the map was fuzzy and some of the colours bad, particularly green. Martin provided a pdf for the KB map and others have printed from it without those problems. This seems to point to the specific printer used. I have very occasionally encountered problems at a normally very reliable print shop. The conclusion must be that the work must be submitted and picked up in time to do something about it if the result is unsatisfactory. At least an extra day is required to ask the printer to re-do the work. And no agreeing to last-minute changes to a whole set of files!

Planners and controllers note that you have to complete your work in time for a printing process that takes some time, and has to have a buffer in it for printer breakdown and human error.