From InDesign drop hadows to the printers

[doodaad]

So, I have been having problems with drop shadows in InDesign CS. When I collect and send files to the printers to be printed, the drop shadow that was done in InDesign shows up with a crude box at the printers. Does anyone know what I can do to not make that happen and make it a smooth transaction while still using drop shadows in InDesign CS?

Any advice would be great as the printer does not know how to solve it and neither do I.

 

[jimoblak]

Find another printer with a clue or use the transparency preview of CS to see if you did something wrong.

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?

 

[jmgalvin]

There are a few possible solutions, or at least guides.

One might be to send the thing as pdf, if the printer can handle that. Some have problems with separations in pdf. If you do this, you can get some control on the thing. If you use the Press setting, and make the PDf compatible with Acrobat 5 or higher (depending on what the printer uses) and then go to advnaced tab and Transparency Flattener/high resolution things generally work out ok. Acrobat 4 does not support transparency well, so don't use that.

The above sometimes solves the problem of the printer's rip, not being able to handle the ID transparency well. I have several printers where pdf works great, but have problems with ID. I also have the reverse.

When printing from ID there are a few things to check on the Print window. These apply equally when "printing" a postscript file. In the Graphics tab select All under Images/Send data (the drop shadow is a raster - as would be seen in the transparency flattener preview, if raster is selected to display). Another important thing is in the Advanced tab. Make sure that High is selected in Transparency flattener.

If all fails and you have to get the job out, you can try diong the text/drop shadow in Photoshop at a high resolution, make a tiff and stick that in the ID doc. That's the old, tried and true, method.

 

[thekeogh]

Don't know if you are getting a white box but if you are it is because the background color is spot or RGB. Drop shadows only work on CMYK process as drop shadows are a process effect.

 

[HopheadCS]

If you look in the Transparency Flattener Preset Options dialog box, you can click clip complex regions to create a vector mask around the rasterized transparency. I'm new to InDesign too, but this info was in an article by Mordy Golding. If this info is incorrect please tell me, I love being corrected.