Sending Illustrator Transparency to printer

[stratajai]

I would like to use the illustrator transparency more often, however it seams to cause problems here and there with saving and doesn't show up correct in my pdfs...basically I am looking for someone who has experience using this option in Illustrator that has created printable(offset) artwork before. What should I know, any input. Pros, cons? What's flatten transparency mean? I do it but I dont understand why?? Where to begin.

[j]

Justin Adleff • JUXTAFLO •

http://www.juxtaflo.com

 

[DGTLguy]

if you want to preserve the transparency, you need to save as a GIF or EPS file. PDF's do not support transparency.

also flatten transparency is mostly used for web graphics... if you want to save a file to be used on the web and you want to be able to see the background through the transparent parts, for example, then you need to flatten transparency before saving.

i'm still learning myself so you might want to find other information about transparency and file formats that may be more useful.

 

[signal49]

First, I think Acrobat 6 DOES support transparency.

Flattening transparency rasterizes it. You can decide how much gets rasterized and how much stays vector, but your amount of control depends on which version of Illustrator you have, as they have improved this with each upgrade. Also, any text that is in the area of the transparency has a chance of being rasterized. So you could end up with part of a word being raster and part vector. In Illustrator 10 and CS (not sure about 9), there is a Transparency Flattener Preview or something like that which shows as a mask (like in Photoshop) what areas of your art will be affected (rasterized) by flattening.

I really only have experience with this concerning 2-color printing and I know that jobs I have gotten that use transparency have given me a lot of headaches. For one thing, it turns everything involved to CMYK. So if you're trying to print spot colors.... You just won't have spot colors anymore. There are workarounds by changing the spots to percentages of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black but I imagine there are some instances when that wouldn't work. That's what I've had to do to get them to print.

As a prepress person, I'm really glad that you as a designer are showing interest in how to make your jobs print more predictably I would suggest that you print the seps yourself before you bring in any job to the printer. The more troubleshooting and prepress work you can do, the better. You won't have to worry about some unpredictable color problem, or whatever else may happen. Then you can also bring in your own print outs of the seps for the printer to use as a guide. As a friend of mine would say, "CYA - Cover Your @ss." The more hard copy you can provide, the better. (I love it when designers are prepared!)

 

[stratajai]

Signal...you are my new found friend. I am happy to see you in here, prepress person and all. I have some great printing vendors that help out considerably with these issues. However everybody does things little different and I like about three opinions on everything I do. I figure I can only elevate as a designer if I can predict the results of my designs. I can't think of it if I dont know what can be accomplished.

As far as the transparency thing, I will look for this previewer in Illustrator as you suggested & I have just begun researching printing my own color separations with our desktop printers. This transparency warning keeps coming up with my files even when I just use it to sketch & get rid of the effect for final artwork. Haven't heard anything back from my printer so far, so I think I figured it out & the warning didn't apply to my artwork. Can I disable that function in Illustrator? Also, am I correct to say it's ok to use it with four color process jobs? Keep me posted on your experience with this function, if it always has to be raterized to print properly, I would rather just use PS for those file builds.

Thanks for your reply,

[j]

Justin Adleff • JUXTAFLO •

http://www.juxtaflo.com