Gradients to PDF in Freehand MX

[jimzenglish]

Hi there I'm having trouble converting a Freehand MX file to PDF because of the radial gradient it has from yellow inside to green on outer edge. The gradient comes through very banded in the pdf and looks horrible.
Any suggestions, seems to be a Freehand thing as tried the same thing in InDesign and looked alot better. Have to do the job in Freehand though.

[jimking]

What OS are you using? Are you working in RGB or CMYK? How are you creating the pdf straight out of Freehand? Have you tried placing the pdf in Indy then creating the pdf?

[doubting_thomas]

What about exporting an .eps file and Distilling that with Press or Hi-Quality
settings in Distiller. It may be a ppd/driver thing depending on how your generating the pdf file.

[jimzenglish]

Hi there
Mac OS 10.4.1 and Freehand 11.01
Creating eps from FH then using Distiller 7.0 on Press setting
Have also tried making a postcript file from FH then distilling that. same problem.
Also placed eps into Indesign and pdf from there, same problem.
I just think it's a Freehand eps problem with radial and angled gradients.

[stickleback]

we had a MAJOR problem with gradients in FH a couple of years back and YES it's a FHB thing.

Check your pdf in photoshop and sample the colour mix.

[steve2112]

vector based gradients can experience banding especially when go over a small color range. The best thing to try is to make the gradient in photshop and say as a .psd or tiff and place that into freehand. It happens in illustrator and indesign sometimes to.

steve

[stickleback]

and not just the banding - the problem we experienced was wholesale colour changes a gold to white gradient changed to bright turquoise to cyan....