Another D*** InDesign Transparency issue

[pippi]

I know you guys must be sick to death of this, I know I AM. :o

I have a lovely duotone gradient created in Photoshop as a background in InDesign2. I have text angled over the top set to a transparent white with a shadow.

When I check my duotones by creating PDF seps... I get these white outlines where the text box might be. Not a solid white knock-out but like the text box has a hairline frame. It doesn’t BTW. I tried converting to curves – no luck. Check my PDF settings, they’re press quality.

Funny thing… I opened the PDF seps in Photoshop to crop so I could attach a visual for you – no lines. There are also no lines if I print a composite.

The plates will be run from PDFs – so I’m worried that I’m completely buggered. Any thoughts?

[doubting_thomas]

Do you have the Overprint Preview turned on in Acrobat? You may try moving the
text one layer above the duotone link, too. Sometimes that helps. Another thing
to mess with is the Transparency Flattener. Sorry if you've tried these already.

[PrintDriver]

Is your overprint turned on? Or off. Programs hate white overprinting.
Also try putting your text on a separate layer from the background. But I don't think that is the problem as it's the text that is transparent, not the background.

[pippi]

Thanks for the quick replys... I am very new to InDesign. I will try these & get back to you.

[pippi]

Ok... Tried the others but I'm at a loss on the overprint. There's no traping selected in the Trap Dialog box. Am I looking for this in InDesign or acorbat?

My counterpart in the office has an "Adobe PDF Presets" option for outputing PDFs. She seems to have more control over her output. I have only Export & Print to PDF options - am I missing a plug-in or something?

Thanks again!

[doubting_thomas]

Don't trap it unless your printer tells you to. Most prefer that you don't. Call
them if you have questions about it (but nobody mentioned trap setings).
Overprint Preview is available in Acrobat version 6+. It's under the
Advanced menu on your tool bar. For more help if you're using
Acrobat 6+, search the Help menu for it. You can have your co-worker give
you her presets and then you'd install them in the same place where your
other one's are. The location depends if you're on a PC or a Mac (hint-do a
Find for Press Quality and follow that path to the presets). They will then be
available to you when you Print or Export PDF's.

I think you need to at least try Overprint Preview before you spend time on
the other steps though.

[bluekivi]

Turning off the “smooth line art” and “smooth images” option in the page display area of Acrobat's general preferences will cause the preview of these lines to disappear.

[budafist]

Don't trap it.

Send a screenshot of your concerns to your printer when you send the file through and ask them to look at it.

[Rizz]

I think I've run into this before.

Let me clarify. There is a thin white lined box around your type, as if the text box from InDesign was still there, correct?

And it only appears in the PDF when you view it, correct?

I've seen this on PDFs. The thin white line would not show up on our negatives. Have you printed this out to a Postscript printer yet? That is a good way to check.

You might wanna ask your printer to check it on their output system (be it computer to plate or film imagesetter). These systems usually have a proofing ability and they should be able to tell you if the white lines will show up.

[Ned]

Yes, this is from the PDF rasterization of the graphics. Transparencies from Indy can't be handled as vector art (only in Illustrator can you maintain transparencies as vector opacity masks - which really isn't a good idea when it gets to press, anyways). Therefore, the PDF is going to chop it up into chunks, and where the text boxes were, will be solid chunks of rasterized graphic underneath, hopefully maintaining vector outlines for the text iteself, layered on top (especially true when using Indy effects like drop shadows).

This generally just shows up in Acrobat's preview, yes. It may be fine in print, but if acrobat is having too many problems handling it, then the printer's RIP may as well. Try zooming in further in Acrobat using CMD-Spacebar or CMD-+, and see if these indescrepencies disappear. If they don't, you may want to rasterize your file more to avoid problems (using your transparency flattener presets, which will be available to use if you are using Acrobat 4/PDF1.0 compatibility, under the Advanced tab, under Output).

[pippi]

Last week I did just that - took it into the office & ran it through their output. Their RIP is handleing it all fine so I have no worries now.

Thanks again for all your help. I thought I'd be able to pick-up InDesign easily after using Adobe products for so long but now I think I'll be looking for a class.

[budafist]

A class will certainly help, but if you've been using Indy for a while you might get a bit bored if it's a basics class. See if there is a more advanced class around.