variable images | transparency

[prepress_vee]

Does anyone know of any sw that can swap out images using transparency(Multiply), placed inside a spot color box in INDD?

For instance...
We're running this post card and it has variable text front & back, also variable images. The images that are to be swapped out are layered grayscale .psd files. Placed in INDD & then the Multiply effect applied to them.

My problem currently is the images are being flattened and giving the dreaded white box! Rather than letting the colored box they are placed in show through.

I'm not using uDirect, and I'm wondering if that could be my $2500 fix to the problem.....

Thanks in advance.
Vee

[rab]

Could you possibly just make the backgroung in photoshop and make the pics flattened images?

Don't really deal with variable printing here just thinking of a way to simplify things.

[beermonster]

i saw something recently called UImage - is that part/connected to the Udirect yu mentioned?

anyway - uimage is a photoshop vdp plug in that might do what you are after

[prepress_vee]

Originally Posted by rab

Could you possibly just make the backgroung in photoshop and make the pics flattened images?

Don't really deal with variable printing here just thinking of a way to simplify things.

Thanks guys..

rab - i could but it would be the same result as how I've decided to "fix" it now.. that was my initial thought tho. I'm going to run this as 2 jobs.
And I won't have to rebuild anything. Just print xxxxx with Image 1, and then print xxxx with Image 2. Luckily there are only 2 different images and Image 1 is only used just over 100 times. So we'll insert the 100 by hand into the correct Pre Sort position for mailing.

It would be nice if I could just write an "if statement" and have them swap out on the fly based on the DB. Like we always do! But my Variable Data SW will not handle .psd files. And this client is picky - so no room for error ya know.

Thanks for the replies - I was drifting into panic mode yesterday afternoon.

Vee