PRINTING WITH SHADOW IS NOT WORKING

[11design]

I did a simple poster in Illustrator 10.0, added a black shadow on the back of one of the rectangles (orange) and saved in pdf. When I received the poster there was a bright orange area filling the space that was supposed to be the black shadow. I am new to Illustrator but I am trying to figure out the problem myself and the only thing that seems to be wrong is when I save the poster. Appears a message telling: "When spot colors are used with transparency, changing them to process colors outside of Illustrator can generate unexpected results." This is related to me or to the person that will work on printing my poster? How I can verify if the colors are spot or not? When I press the colors used the window appears with no information...By the way I didn't use transparency.
Or maybe it's nothing related to that. So someone guess why it printed that way??

 

[NFAY]

Lots of things could be going wrong unfortunately. If you go to SUMMARY in the Print menu do you get any warning messages? Those are always good hints.

I have had the spot color message come up when saving even with a very simple file with NO spot colors so not sure about all of that but maybe someone else will have an idea. Even with that message I have had no problems.

I do know that one of the Adobe folks on the Adobe board explained that this could "simply" be your printer which really doesn't help, but this sounds like you sent it TO a printer.

Oh and if you added a shadow using Effects (rather than say a solid gray rectangle with no transparency) -- you DO have transparency in your file. Shadows are transparencies.

I understand it is VERY confusing even reading the Help files over and over.

Did you try printing out a file on your home printer before sending off? Can your printer work with at TIFF file?

My personal test is that SUMMARY sheet in the Print Dialog. If there are no warnings and it looks good, it has come out well for me in print. I send my files out to magazines for clients so don't work directly with printers - only the specs of the magazines. A good idea is to ask your printer EXACTLY what he wants for specs and then see if you can do that. If you didn't try printing out a proof on you computer that might be a good idea. See if the file you sent to the printer has the same problem on your home printer.

Sure someone that works directly with printers will have some ideas. Good luck.

Good luck.

Nikki Fay

http://www.faystudios.com/illustrator/

Beginning and Intermediate Illustrator Tutorials featuring CS2

 

[11design]

There's a message telling that "the document contais artwork that requires flattening". I tryed to do it but I am not sure if I did the right thing because I chose the rectangle and are with the shadow with the direct selection and asked for Preview. In the same it tells the all the color will be changed to process and fonts outlined. What I ended up was exactly the result of the poster printed before. Am I doing something wrong. I am new to Illustrator 10.0 and I did some posters but never used the flatten or rasterize..

 

[NFAY]

Well that would have been my first guess .

Lots of info on flattening and other "print warning" messages at

http://www.faystudios.com/illustrator/faq-print.cfm

Two main things. Any layer that is locked (or sub-layer) will not flatten. Flattening using the layers menu has not worked well for me (read - did not really flatten for some reason) so I use Object>Flatten Transparency. You need to set the flattening settings. Hopefully your printer can give you instructions on what he needs. I use the highest settings for the magazines I send to and that workes well. You ALSO need to have set your Document Raster Effects Stettings (under Effects in CS2 which is what I have). They probably need to be in the 300 dpi to 400 dpi range but ASK your printer.

Hope some of that helps. Since most of what I do contains transparencies of some kind I select the WHOLE document and then flatten. You should end up with NO flattening warning in the summary box.

Good luck

Nikki Fay

http://www.faystudios.com/illustrator/

Beginning and Intermediate Illustrator Tutorials featuring CS2