PDF viewing problems with black overprint from Quark

[EicherDesignDotCom]

Hi all,
This is really bugging me. It seems like there is a simple solution that I am missing due to overthinking/overcomplicating this issue, so hopefully your fresh sets of eyeballs on my problem will speed things up...

I have a grayscale tiff file. It is basically a gray blob (drop shadow) for a product. This file is overlaying a spot color gradient in quark. So, I have one picture box with the spot gradient (created in Photoshop) and then another picture on top with the grayscale tiff. I want the black blob to overprint on top of the spot color. Since it is a gradient I can't just make the box background the spot color, so I get a white field around the black blobs.

Now, when I go to print/PDF the document, I choose OVERPRINT BLACK and yet the resulting print/PDF still shows the white background field.

SO then, my question is, how do I get rid of the white field so it is actually overprinting?
Any help would be SO appreciated.
THANKS!

 

[ctangora]

One option is to make it a 1 bit tiff. That would allow you to have it be a true colorless background. If you are using an 8 bit TIFF then you are still defining the background (As white). Use a 1 bit tiff (monochrome) and set the background to none.


Hope it works.


chris

 

[zeeGerman]

To things.
Which output program do you work in? InDesign or Quark?
Which PDF Engine do you use?

 

[EicherDesignDotCom]

ctangora:
How do you save a 1 bit TIFF? Is that a Bitmap? How do they handle gradients?

zeeGerman:
OSX 10.3.3
QuarkXPress 6.1
Acrobat Distiller 6.0
Photoshop 7

 

[zeeGerman]

Ok, the major problem is, that you have a spot color in your doc.
Actually the only way i figured out is to set the diff. info for the color to overprint and non overprint. You have to do this on the colors you wanna work with.
Anonther solution could be, kind of tricky, to make a quark .eps of the whole side and rebuild the side in Photoshop, with all color as you want them to have.