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drop shadows in pdf???

G

gonnabuyamac

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 26, 2006
412
0
i designed a brochure in InDesign, then exported it to pdf so that I can print it either through fedex/kinkos or at office depot. when i load it onto their sites, the images in the document that have drop shadows act weird - either they end up in filled in boxes, or boxes are around the images.

Why does that happen? Is there a setting I have wrong?
 
What PDF setting do you use? I notice that is I use a PDF/X3 or /X1A setting, but if I use Press Quality, I don't get the white box. Do you see it when you preview your PDF, or only when you take it for output?
 
I have experienced this before because I do prepress at a print shop. I make my pdf with press quality settings. It has to do with the flattening of a pdf with transparent images. We print from Acrobat 8 and it seems to fix the boxes. So wherever you go to take your file, ask them for an actual sample first.
 
This is the Roman God of Design's way of telling you to not use drop shadows. ;)
 
Hi there!

I´ve droped shadows in indesign, and when printing, didn't come with any problem...all good. i never heard, droping shadow in a pdf program lol
 
uopss...sorry there, didn't read the post right! i understanded the wrong way... try to save in pdf version 7, when the program asks you in which version os pdf would you like to save de file
 
I have said this before, but kinko's is the herpies of the graphic design world. And I would prefer a drop shadow now over the wet floor effect. Uhhg!
 
Lixivial said:
What about a drop shadowed lens flare reflected with a wet floor that has numerous amounts of strokes?

'course we'd have to overlay some text in Comic Sans, non? :)
Click to expand...

That would be sweet! I would also add some nice gradients to complete this awesome design.
 
gonnabuyamac said:
i designed a brochure in InDesign, then exported it to pdf so that I can print it either through fedex/kinkos or at office depot. when i load it onto their sites, the images in the document that have drop shadows act weird - either they end up in filled in boxes, or boxes are around the images.

Why does that happen? Is there a setting I have wrong?
Click to expand...

If you are talking about very fine white lines which appear everywhere, then this is a result of flattening the file, as the image becomes segmented. Press output profiles generally require Acrobat 4 which does not support transparency. If you zoom in on these white lines in Acrobat you should find they don't get any bigger. They should not appear on final prints, it's like a rounding error in Acrobat's display. You can avoid it by saving your PDFs as 5 or above, retaining transparency, but you should be very careful to discuss colour management and flattening preferences with your printer, or expect some surprises.
 
Getting rid of those white lines.

I have had problems with these 'white lines' appearing on PDFs for years
and have only just discovered the cure!

I believe that as long as your PDF is set to 1.4 all your problems will be solved!
 
Alecia said:
I have had problems with these 'white lines' appearing on PDFs for years
and have only just discovered the cure!

I believe that as long as your PDF is set to 1.4 all your problems will be solved!
Click to expand...

Yes, that's what I said in my previous post. Acrobat 5 or above retains transparency, the file is not flattened.

However, you don't really need to look at the lines as a big problem. They are an onscreen anomaly and should not appear on any of your prints. The only problem I have with them is explaining to clients that they can be ignored. But it's about time Adobe did something about them. And if you do "solve" them by not flattening the PDF, you should check with your printer what settings they will apply when flattening the file. Flattening also the invokes the colour management engine. If you do it, you can verify the result. Your printer may use a different setting and produce different colour breakdowns. I think a lot of newer rips can take unflattened PDF directly, but all our printers and publishers ask for v1.3 PDFs (Acrobat 4).
 
Lixivial said:
What about a drop shadowed lens flare reflected with a wet floor that has numerous amounts of strokes?

'course we'd have to overlay some text in Comic Sans, non? :)
Click to expand...
Woot woot. I am getting payed for this right? :D :D :D

Apologies for further deviating from the original question... I was bored...
 

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RubberChicken said:
However, you don't really need to look at the lines as a big problem. They are an onscreen anomaly and should not appear on any of your prints. The only problem I have with them is explaining to clients that they can be ignored. .
Click to expand...

This is not always the case. In my opinion they shouldn't be ignored.
Some jobs i've had no problems with at all and the lines don't appear on the CTP plates, or on the print job, however there have been two or three where the lines have been present!
 My advice is don't take the chance! Theres nothing worse that getting a job on the press when you're admint the lines won't print and then they do when the make readys start churning through! Press time is expensive!
 
Alecia said:
This is not always the case. In my opinion they shouldn't be ignored.
Some jobs i've had no problems with at all and the lines don't appear on the CTP plates, or on the print job, however there have been two or three where the lines have been present!
 My advice is don't take the chance! Theres nothing worse that getting a job on the press when you're admint the lines won't print and then they do when the make readys start churning through! Press time is expensive!
Click to expand...

I have had the white boxes appear around my transparency effects, but my printer got it resolved. I'm not sure what they did, but I think it had to do with overprinting. I don't know if the geniuses at Kinko's will be able to help, though...
 
Alecia said:
This is not always the case. In my opinion they shouldn't be ignored.
Some jobs i've had no problems with at all and the lines don't appear on the CTP plates, or on the print job, however there have been two or three where the lines have been present!
 My advice is don't take the chance! Theres nothing worse that getting a job on the press when you're admint the lines won't print and then they do when the make readys start churning through! Press time is expensive!
Click to expand...

Certainly a serious issue if they do turn up on plates. I'm reminded now that I've heard one or two cases of this before, but I'd forgotten about it. Just my personal experience they have not...yet. Also, I asked Adobe tech about it years ago, and mine was the explanation I received.

As it's the nature of the flattening engine to slice up the page when compositing transparency effects, and the lines (for me at least) always appear around the slices after this, how do you prepare a flattened prepress PDF without them? Bearing in mind 99% of our vendors still require v1.3 PDFs which cannot contain live transparency.
 
transparency, same but different

Sorry to revive an oldish thread. I have a very similar problem and have been reading up on this all day. But am not clear if there's anything I can do or if it's actually the printer's responsibility.
In my case it's a one colour (black/greyscale) job and the boxes aren't thin white lines but a whole box shape making the % fill background slightly lighter when a drop shadowed object is over it. The object is angled and the box shape covers the whole area of the angled picture (i.e. square on, not angled). It's presumably the same issue, i.e. drop shadow/transparency and the software's ability to flatten or deal with it. But I can't figure if I should be going up a level or down a level when creating the pdf (i.e. to 1.4, 5 or 6?) and thus leave the transparency live or not.
The printer has Acrobat 7 and uses FlowDrive and CTP technology. I did my layout in InDesign 3.0 and saved the original problem pdf as 1.4, I think. The problem is totally invisible in InD and Acrobat at any %. Even with Overprint preview on. It only appeared on the plate (or in fact its preview). Can I get the printer to change settings on his software to get past the problem? Communication is slow because they're in a different country. And time is getting short.
If I can't solve it I'm going to have to go through and remove every drop shadow (and in spite of previous discussions on their being a blight on the face of graphic design, I'd quite like to keep them!)
Any help appreciated. Thanks very much.
 
manples said:
Sorry to revive an oldish thread. I have a very similar problem and have been reading up on this all day. But am not clear if there's anything I can do or if it's actually the printer's responsibility.
In my case it's a one colour (black/greyscale) job and the boxes aren't thin white lines but a whole box shape making the % fill background slightly lighter when a drop shadowed object is over it. The object is angled and the box shape covers the whole area of the angled picture (i.e. square on, not angled). It's presumably the same issue, i.e. drop shadow/transparency and the software's ability to flatten or deal with it. But I can't figure if I should be going up a level or down a level when creating the pdf (i.e. to 1.4, 5 or 6?) and thus leave the transparency live or not.
The printer has Acrobat 7 and uses FlowDrive and CTP technology. I did my layout in InDesign 3.0 and saved the original problem pdf as 1.4, I think. The problem is totally invisible in InD and Acrobat at any %. Even with Overprint preview on. It only appeared on the plate (or in fact its preview). Can I get the printer to change settings on his software to get past the problem? Communication is slow because they're in a different country. And time is getting short.
If I can't solve it I'm going to have to go through and remove every drop shadow (and in spite of previous discussions on their being a blight on the face of graphic design, I'd quite like to keep them!)
Any help appreciated. Thanks very much.
Click to expand...

This is what was happening to me about a year ago. I don't know much about the mechanics of printing (and knew even less then), but I read that it had to do with overprinting. When I told my print shop that, they were able to fix it.

That may be worthless info, but I'm afraid that's all the help I can offer.
 
I'll pass it on to them though, thanks. Still waiting to hear back from them re my suggestions that there are settings on their software that they can change and which version of pdf is best.
 
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