Illy CS2 Flattening

[cmichaud]

I have a problem that is really stumping me. I have a blue box. And then i have a smaller white box on top of this blue box. The white box has a drop shadow. Everything looks fine on the screen. And it also looks fine when i save it as a pdf. However when i print this document, the blue box has a portion of it that is more transparent (and therefore a differnt color)...its the portion around the outside of the white box.....its as if the printer isnt picking it up a a flatten document. Meaning, back in illy when i click on the drop shadow, and the little box outlining it pops up, the part of this box that overlaps onto the blue box effects the transparency of the blue box. Whats going on here! Please help!!

[PersonasBinar]

Are you using the high res flattening preset when you save it as eps? As well what type of PS does your printer support?

[cmichaud]

humm. my preset is set at custom. with the vector setting all the way up. should i set the preset to high. i am new to this...

caleb

[Mynock]

How did you apply the drop shadow Filter or Effect?

[PersonasBinar]

if you are getting transparency weirdness highest res possible is the best way to go.

[cmichaud]

i applied the drop shadow through filter. I moved to high res and same problems. I am printing it from a pdf file.


Caleb

[Mynock]

Dunno, but I do know there are a ton of posts related to it on this forum. Try doing a search.

[Danger_Mouse]

I have had a similar problem, I had to flatten the image.... but did it by saving as an EPS and reopening in PS at a decent resolution. Then resave.
You lose the editing features, but you always have the original vector to go back to.

It get's the job done but your colors will go out of wack if you chose specific ones. you may have to save the blue box with it as well.

[cmichaud]

resave it in PS as what sorta file? Let me get this right: flatten entire image, save as eps, eps file in photoshop, save as pdf????

Also, is what i am worrying about not a big deal....meaning it would print fine at a print shop?
Caleb

[Danger_Mouse]

first I saved as an illy eps
Then opened in PS, entering desired resolution
then I resave as PS EPS
Replace it in the pdf (which I opened with Illy)
Then saved again as a new PDF.

It's a annoying route, but I had no time and it worked.

Also, is what i am worrying about not a big deal....meaning it would print fine at a print shop?
I would be concerned but talk to your printer, they may be able to support it.

[Danger_Mouse]

Try creating your drop shadow effect without using the filter.
Maybe with gradient mesh tool. This will still give you that nice effect without messing with transparency/filter problems.

[PersonasBinar]

There should be no reason whatsoever to go through all that...noway no how.
If there was Adobe wold be shitting themselves.

[Danger_Mouse]

yes its a HUGE PAIN.

I have looked into it before for a solution and only found this link for an adobse plug in that fixed this sort of problem. Its somewhere in a past thread about this.

Other wise I have never heard of another solution and would be estatic if someone has one.

[Danger_Mouse]

http://www.adobe.com/studio/print/ptd.html#colorandtransparancy

This was posted by Print Driver before. I am still looking for the plugin.

[PersonasBinar]

ok I made two boxes.. blue and white...applied shadow to the white, saved as PDF from Illy. I used a PDF x1a standard and Maxed out the flattening. Printed the PDF from Acrobat, perfect, no problem.

[Danger_Mouse]

You know what I am thinking of my own output at work. We sublimate into fabric and our customers have picked a color from our own swatch library (which is the color of the fabric). So when I personally apply any kind of transpareny to artwork I am usually placing the art on a pattern in illustrator that I cannot flatten for color matching purposes. So this metheod doesn't work and we have been trying to find a way around it. Sorry for the confusion, you are correct PersonasBinar but it just doesn't work here and I had that stuck in my head.

[PersonasBinar]

So like bike jerseys and such...cool.
So you actually go so far as to have a colour layer to have "under" the artwork to match the fabric you'll be subb'ing onto?

[Danger_Mouse]

yeah we do ALL sports, hockey, football, basketball, track, swimming, wrestling, volleyball, feild hockey, lacrosse, soccer and I am sure Im forgetting some. We do all the catalogues, photoshooting and marketing in-house. Then I have different States and provinces of clients.

yeah our patterns are all digital illustrator files. We create the artwork and place them on the patterns and send to print on special ink printers. Then its sublimated.
So we have a color swatch library of our own (like 18 colors) and our customer expects to have logos match (we also custom match to pms colors). Especially with numbers and outlines. If we used two different reds it would look stupid. We change all incoming red to our reds. (and all other colors too for that matter)
So ....using the flattening metheod doesn't work for us as the color matching becomes a nightmare.
I have put out some personal jerseys of my own where I don't care if the colors are off as long as its consistant and I have done as you said. haha I laugh now because I feel like an idiot, leading someone up the wrong path. haha won't be the last time.
I just had it stuck in my head.

It's Monday.

[cmichaud]

Personas

For my own education, could you please explain your posting to me. I am branding spanking new here and dont really understand what you were talking about. This is the second such document i have had this problem with. Please teach yoda....if ya get time.

Caleb

[Danger_Mouse]

Sorry cmichaud,
I would just forget anything I said as I don't think it applies to you. Person has it right.

Did you check out that link I posted? Any questions you have should be in there.