(v13) Limitations of OPI replacement

This page applies to Harlequin v13.1r0 and later; both Harlequin Core and Harlequin MultiRIP.

No attempt is made to color separate composite high-resolution data in a pre-separated workflow, or if OPI comments are nested within DCS separations. Instead, an invalidaccess error is triggered with /OPIimage as the offending command. The Info part of the error report is “Cannot use OPI with multi-channel images in pre-separated jobs, or inside DCS files”.

Detection of composite color may fail in some cases:

• Most cases work as expected: if the high-resolution data is JPEG or TIFF, the file is inspected directly, and everything should work; if the high-resolution data is EPS, the comments in the header of the EPS file are examined for the comments %%DocumentProcessColors and %%DocumentCustomColors, and for DCS comments in an attempt to determine whether or not it is a color file.

The remaining case is if the high-resolution data is PDF and the procset code relies on the OPI comments being right. Most of the time this produces the expected results, but if you use a TIFF preview image for a color high-resolution PDF file, you should make that preview image color (in whichever of RGB or CMYK is convenient). It is valid to use a grayscale TIFF file as a preview for a color high-resolution PDF file (because the grayscale file would be smaller); however, in this case, the PDF file may be regarded as monochrome and allowed to pass in a pre-separated workflow and so create incorrect output.

• An extended case of the previous point is where the user has applied a tint to a grayscale TIFF preview or applied a spot color to it. These operations are not valid on composite color high-resolution data. No guarantees are given as to whether the PDF file runs without errors in this case; it is almost certain that the output does not match the designer’s expectation.

The procset does not act on other specifications providing OPI-like functionality (for example, it does not support Scitex APR instructions).