A problem with the gradient mesh

[tembographics]

I am fairly new to the gmesh...and am trying to use it for a medical illustration; the side view of a woman's face. I am aiming for a very realistic feel...and the big mesh over the entire face and neck looks great. However, I am now putting smaller separate meshes on top of this to illustrate features such as the eye, the lips and the nose. The trouble is - even tho' the values (it is in greyscale) are exactly the same on the 'nodes' of the top and bottom meshes around the edge of the 'join'....I can still slightly see the join. So in other words...... I can see the outline of the clipping path of the nose. How should I deal with this? This 'edge issue' has worked well on the lips because the outline of the clipping mesh is the outline of the lips.

Also......! This illustration has got to be in greyscale....and it looks a tiny bit plastic...how do I get over that problem?

All help will be grateful recieved! Unfortunately I cannot post the image here as the person I am illustrating might be recognisable!

[The Repro Kid]

Have you tested to see if it prints correctly? Illustrator can do funny things with patterns and gradients especially when they are masked. I used to set up a lot of specialty 3D, Eclipse, and Fireworks glasses which had very elaborate art prepared for special events. The designs often used patterns. I'd have to mask each one set of glasses in such a way that it could be stepped and repeated into the die pattern. On Screen the separate masked patterns showed up individually with the potential to mis-cut and so bleeds were built in where possible. But when output to film, the entire stack of stepped glasses would print as one large block of continuos, repeating patterns, which improved the job by eliminating any bleed crossover problems.

Since your nodes have the same percentages, the image may output correctly by way of how illustrator processes the image.

[tembographics]

Thanks for the reply......I understood your second paragraph!!!!!

No seriously...much appreciated and I will print it out later (got to cook family dinner first!) and see how it looks. Many, many thanks!

P.S. you will see from my answer that I have not had much experience in the outputting of artwork like this! Up to this point I have relied more on scanning in finished artwork and touching it up in Photoshop - or doing simple shapes and outlines in Illustrator and colouring in Photoshop. Now I have seen what Illustrator can do I am determined to get good at it!

[tembographics]

I printed it out as you suggested....but could not tell at my A4 printout size - so I printed it out at 190% and it took 45 mins to print!!! But - no line visible! So many thanks for the advice.

[The Repro Kid]

Cool. Gradient meshes are very "heavy" and processor intensive. So are patterns. Those glasses I told you about used to take about an hour for each piece of film to output.

[TORCH511]

Those glasses I told you about used to take about an hour for each piece of film to output.

Hence why RIPs were invented. But I know what you mean, imaged out a few jobs that took a while. Not QUITE that long, but then again apples and oranges, I doubt they would take that long to process on today's computers.

Even on a fast computer, gradient meshes can be resource hogs. Not always a bad thing, I have learned other techniques for accomplishing similar results that are easier on the system when a Gmesh is not required.

[The Repro Kid]

I'm a bit confused as to what you are saying. The film was RIPed, how else can you output film separations? The sheets were 40" press sheets, I'd output (RIP) one 11x17 portion of the seps and then the these sheets were stepped on a burton board in the contact frame to make a 40" sheet.

[TORCH511]

Exactly what I thought you had done... was just making a general statement appreciating RIP stations and not placing such a load on the workstation. I probably should have added that last friday I had to output a 14 color seperation, lots of gradients, gmesh and other fun stuff... 21x25 sheets which took... a while.

Sorry if you misunderstood.

[The Repro Kid]

I had no idea people actually printed to an image setter without the aid of a RIP station. Can that be done? What kind of image setter do you have? 14 colors? I've done silkscreen with that many seps, but that's about it.

[TORCH511]

I would not imagine you would find that many colors in print jobs other than screen due to press limitations... however I have seen some 10+ offset jobs that use that many. For example I was tearing down a playmobil box that one of my kids got for Xmas one year and came across colorboxes for 7 color process, plus 5 additional spot colors. That has to be some offset press. The flexographic presses we have here only handle 5, 6 and 8 stations, though our flexo press operators can only handle about 1 or 2. Not only that but you eat up one station for a die.

Can you run an image setter from a desktop... sure. 2 parts to a RIP... the computer, and the software. What is to stop the RIP software, such as OpenRIP to be installed on a workstation? A long time ago at one of my old jobs we had a filmsetter (outputs to photographic 35mm and medium format film) that was pretty much exactly that. It was an all in one propietary system. And when you were outputting, you could not work. Well, sure you COULD, though you would fall asleep doing so.

We have an ECRM Mako56, which I would like to take a sledgehammer to. My predecessor who was very inept at her job picked it out. It handles as big as we need it to, but I am limited to 4mil film, and support is hard to come by. I need to deal with it for about another year and then we should have the capital to replace it and that is coming from the owner's mouth. I can assure you the next one won't be bad.

14 colors, but that includes a screenable mask, white backup, white blowout and a barrier gray... If you ever see a Zoll automatic defibrilator, that's the part.