PSD file in AI prints with slight box behind it

[MacLady]

I have a photo in Photoshop with a transparent background. No clipping paths are saved in my PSD file. When I place it into Illustrator onto a colored background, it looks great. However, when I print, it has very slight discoloration or box behind my PSD image. It basically takes the dark teal background, and lightens the teal just slightly where the PSD image edge is.
I have no effects on the image in Photoshop, or Illustrator.
Both my laser printers are very new, and both have Fiery front ends, so I don't think it's a printer driver. Both Photoshop and Illustrator are CS3.

Any suggestions as to how to get this to print properly?

[Paj]

from what youve said, it would be your transparency flattening. When you make a PDF, the creation process involves cutting up the artwork into bitmapped and raster areas which fit together like a puzzle. its kinda complicated to explain but there is good info in the help or on the net if you search for 'transparency flattening'

to get around this problem, try exporting with the transparency flattener preset set to 'high resolution', generating a PDF using distiller (if you arent alread), or try saving to an earlier PDF standard.

[eugenetyson]

The other thing to try would be printing it to postscript then distill it to pdf (but of a workaround).

Check out these links - the same applies for any app not just indesign.

http://indesignsecrets.com/eliminating-the-white-box-effect.php

http://indesignsecrets.com/eliminating-ydb-yucky-discolored-box-syndrome.php

http://indesignsecrets.com/spot-colors-and-transparency-flattening-in-indesign-cs3.php

[PrintDriver]

Check out the white papers on Transparency in the lower left corner of this Adobe page.
http://www.adobe.com/studio/print/index.html

Edit:
RE post above -
YIKES.
Rasterize everything??? I'm glad the commenters sorted that out! But you have to read the comments... on ALL of those links.

Turning off color management is usually the first thing to try.

[eugenetyson]

There really is no way to "turn off colour management" really.

And yes the blog is very useful with great comments from people who write the ACE exams and write manuals for the software.

So it's a good reliable source.


Good link by Print Driver there - nice reading material in that link.

[PrintDriver]

It should be required reading before you get to open the program box.

[MacLady]

Thanks for all the ideas...though I have not yet figured this out.
The issue was with printing directly from AI, but to try to work around, I tried creating a High Quality pdf, then printing from within Acrobat, but it did the same thing. I also tried saving as a High Quality pdf, saved down to Acrobat 4, but the placed PSD file disappeared completely from that pdf entirely.

I'm going to do some more reading about transparencies in the Adobe Print Production guide from PrintDriver's post. Thanks for the suggestions.