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baggie · #1 (**permalink**) 07-07-2005, 04:36 AM

Anyone out there have a solution for this one?
Indesign CS 3.0 - Page has an image to which a Drop Shadow has been added in ID. That image and the drop shadow both sit on top of a larger picture that covers the whole page. Of course the idea is that the drop shadow will be transparent and the underlying image will show through when the document is printed (as it looks on screen).
Problem: If the file is exported from ID as a PDF then pitstop reports that the drop shadow object is a 'form' - it has no settings. The file rips successfully. However, due to workflow requirements I would like to send Postscript from ID. When that happens and the file is distilled (v6 to PDF 1.5) the PDF looks OK when previewed in Acrobat with overprint preview On but when turned off it is clear that the whole drop shadow is in a box which blends out to white at its borders AND that is how the file Rips. Pitstop in this case shows that the drop shadow is an image IN CMYK? and that it is set to overprint. However, as you can guess, the drop shadow 'image' simply knocks out a nice hole in the underlying picture with the result that I have a rectangular white area surrounding the shadow when the job is separated & printed via the Rip- any ideas anyone?

pcmodem · #2 (**permalink**) 07-07-2005, 04:54 AM

What type of RIP are you using and is there an upgrade for your RIP?

baggie · #3 (**permalink**) 07-07-2005, 05:35 AM

The Rip is an Adobe Rip CPSI version 3016.103 - this is a pretty recent version as far as I am aware. However, I don't think that the problem is with the Rip - the damage is already done by then i.e. when I print PS from InDesign (and the file is consequently flattened). The flattening does not give a result that will produce the desired effect - correct me if I am wrong here but if I overlay 2 CMYK pictures on top of each other then the top one will not overprint the lower one or create any such kind of visual effect unless it has a 'transparency' setting - but there is no transparency because it was flattened when I printed it as PS.

baggie · #4 (**permalink**) 07-07-2005, 07:58 AM

Hang on..... on further inspection the underlying picture is actually a colorized greyscale tiff - colored up in a Pantone color. If I set the image colour to black then everything works OK (not that I want it to be black). Maybe ID doesn't support this workflow with transparent drop shadows over spot colours - anyone else seen this?

David · #5 (**permalink**) 07-07-2005, 09:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by baggie

Hang on..... on further inspection the underlying picture is actually a colorized greyscale tiff - colored up in a Pantone color. If I set the image colour to black then everything works OK (not that I want it to be black). Maybe ID doesn't support this workflow with transparent drop shadows over spot colours - anyone else seen this?

Yes, spot colors and transparency are not the best of friends. Is the image in question supposed to print as a spot color, or is it a spot that will mix out to cmyk?
Have you tried changing the flattening setting in InDesign? If not, slide it toward the raster side to see if that helps.

hope this helps,
David

baggie · #6 (**permalink**) 07-08-2005, 01:40 AM

Thanks for the advice David. Unfortunately the color does print as a spot. I will try moving the slider over to the 'raster' end as you suggested - at the moment it's 75% towards vector (I tried it at 100% vector and ID crashes every time when outputting the PS).

pcmodem · #7 (**permalink**) 07-08-2005, 04:23 AM

Have you tried turning on "Overprint Preview within InDesign to see how InDesign thinks it should look?

prepress_brillance_43 · #8 (**permalink**) 07-08-2005, 05:10 AM

Just a quick question stemming from this,...

Does having your bar slid all the way over to raster, create cmyk output or will it keep its spot color?

David · #9 (**permalink**) 07-08-2005, 06:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by prepress_brillance_43

Just a quick question stemming from this,...

Does having your bar slid all the way over to raster, create cmyk output or will it keep its spot color?

It should retain all spots, of course, depending on what version of PDF you export to. For my test, with slider bar to 100% raster, I did an export from ID CS2, PDF v1.5 (PDF X3 standard) with cmyk and pms 485, opened the file in Acro 7 and viewed the seps, and all was okay.

prepress_brillance_43 · #10 (**permalink**) 07-08-2005, 06:28 AM

perfect, the good info flows freely from you David and I greatly appreciate it. >

a taste of scotch fer yer friday...