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Transparency problems with PDFs exported from InDesign
I have encountered some unpredictable behavior when creating PDFs in InDesign CS1 related to using transparency.
I export to PDF (using File -> Export to PDF) Then I select the ‘Press’ preset customized with a minimum of Acrobat 5, which I understand is the minimum version of Acrobat to support transparency.
I have had 2 occasions when I have sent a job, and it looks fine in Acrobat (of course) but then in the proofing, or more recently after the print job was returned (yikes) there was a grey box where it shouldn’t have been. In other cases in proofing, I have had black boxes, but then in the end the printer has been able to tweak something to make it output correctly.
In my most recent case – the grey box appeared where a transparent PSD file was placed inside of an InDesign graphic frame, and the content was rotated, but not the frame. The grey was in between where the PSD file edge stopped and the frame edge. The background gradient was visible behind the PSD file, but not where the boundaries of the image stopped. The gradient applied to background of the frame was orange/yellow.
The strange thing is I had the same graphic on the back side – however this time with a solid redish background, and there was no mysterious grey box that appeared.
I would like to think this is a problem with the printers — however I am not so sure.
Can anyone offer some tips on preparing the best PDFs with transparency? …and/or what sort of things I need to tell to the printers so that the job runs as expected?
I am currently working with CS1 on OS X
thanks much.
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2 Replies
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Can you please give us the sub-settings you are using (aside from the Acrobat 5 that you mentioned), so that we can troubleshoot your settings and see where the problem might hail from?
The more complete your settings and feedback, the easier it will be for those here to want to answer and give you real help.
If you can do screen captures of the settings dialog screens you are using, please feel free to send them to me at ron@creativecow.net and I will go through them.
Thanks,
Ron Lindeboom
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Was Ron able to help you out with this one? If not, please post back here, as I have a few suggestions/caveats for outputting transparency effects. Thanks!
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