Transparent text and drop shadow RIP's incorrectly

[BRosengren]

I designed an entire image campaign around a certain look that I created in InDesign. Part of it consists of a headline with white text that has been made transparent and has a drop shadow. Both effects were done in InDesign. The described headline is layered over a Photoshop eps file that is a photograph.

My problem is that I've sent the same files to some printers and they work perfectly, but I've sent the files also to a couple of different magazines (with a high rez proof) and they RIP'd improperly (the transparent headline ended up being 100 opaque white. The drop shadow went away. And...there is a black rectangle shape under the white type that seems to take the place of the drop shadow effect. (Both publications were given a proof that was correct and both publications didn't notice the problem.) Now the screwed up magazines are on my bosses desk and I have to defend myself and Indesign. I am the only person in our group of 4 art directors who is using InDesign. We all received training, but everyone else is continuing with QuarkXpress.

We have a great suppport company keeping us in all the latest versions of everything. We have Mac G5's, OS-X (10.3.7), Adobe Creative Suite, Font Reserve, etc, etc.

I've had the same problem when I've sent files to our in-house color printing center (they are all PC) and then it's when I create a pdf out of InDesign.

I mentioned earlier that some printers have no problem with this. I just used the same files and had two catalogs and 5 brochures done with no problem.

Does anyone have any clues to why this is happening?

Thank you!

Brek Rosengren
Art Director
Wolverine World Wide, Inc.

 

[jimoblak]

Did you supply PDF/X-1a to these magazines? Did any of the magazines specify the PDF settings?

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

 

[BRosengren]

Jimoblak,

One publication got the standard "Press" quality pdf and the other got native InDesign files.

 

[jimoblak]

Should I guess that the ones that got native InDesign files were the ones that had trouble?

Best option:
If you have the full version of Acrobat 6 or 7 installed, use InDesign to print to Adobe PDF and use the PDF/X-1a setting.

2nd best option:
If you do not have Acrobat 6 or 7, export PDF/X-1a from InDesign. Some RIPs may have CID font encoding trouble with InDesign's exported PDF file.

Begging for trouble:
Supply your native INDD file and supporting images and fonts.

You probably did nothing wrong except to offer too many options to the magazines. The problem is allowing the magazines to export your work in any way that they want with the native INDD files. The other prepress folks may have been too clueless to know how to export/print from InDesign. You should force them to using a PDF/X-1a file for best output.

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

 

[jmgalvin]

You might try doing things the old fashioned way and printing a Postcript file and then running it through Distiller. When things get fancy, Distiller seems to do a better job. Another poster had a similar problem and I recommended Distiller. She came back and said that was the solution.

Also the standard Press setting (both in Distiller and Indesign Presets, is set for compatability for Acrobat 4, which does not handle transparency as well as later versions.

Then you run into problems with the RIPs being used by various publications and/or printers. If they haven't upgraded tey might not be able to do things right. Just recently I had a printer who could not do separations out of Indesign, but could out of Acrobat 5. Before that I had a printer who could not do separations out of PDF at all, but could handle Indesign. I don't have the luxury of selecting printers - just send them where the client wants them.

It's nice if the printer/publication can handle PDF-X, but an awful lot don't seem to be able to handle that yet.

I always go to the target publication/printer and find out what they can handle. some are good at publishing submission guidelines, but for others, it's like pulling teeth.

Don't feel alone. This past Summer I blew drop shadows on the inside back cover of the program for a major tennis tournament. I made them VERY tight - with 4 layers - giving a nice grey over blue over grey over blue embossed appearnace, It came out as sort of a dark gray with little difinition. That was an Illustrator file sent as an eps to the printer. They simply could not handle such a tight separation.

As a test, try distilling (Acrobat Distiller with target resolution of 1200 dpi) the thing. Find out what version of Acrobat they have and set your compatability for that version. Send it to your inhouse printing for a proof. I'm assuming that they're running Acrobat and not trying to print out of Reader.

 

[jmgalvin]

WHOA - I missed something. You said: "The described headline is layered over a Photoshop eps file that is a photograph."

I just did the same type of job - the printing was done yesterday and the client was very happy. Mass mailing 9X12 envelopes. I did the text over photo thing directly in Photoshop. That was white text with drop shadow and extrusion (hard chisel) via the Photoshop Layer Styles.

That might be an idea for the future. You might try redoint that whole text over photo thing all in Photshop and see how it comes out.

I just saved as a tiff, imported it into Indesign and added some more text for the rest of the envelope and distilled the pdf.

 

[cfrith]

I'm having similar issues with a catalog which has multiple transparencies and drop shadows. My printer told me that the rip apps don't stay as up to date as InDesign and that we are simply overwhelming the rip. He says that within a year it should no longer be an issue, but for now we have to figure out a work around.

I was getting all sorts of weird white lines and funky things happening to my drop sahdows. The problem still hasn't been completely solved, but we are getting somewhere by doing all of our "effects" (transarencies, drop shadows, rotation...) in photoshop and then placing those psds in indd. It's not the best solution, but it's getting the job done.

 

[carlow]

Hi,

printers and there problems. Normally if you set the flattening option to high, no printer should have a problem. But what is happening? A lot of printers don't buy the official postcript rips, they deal with some rippoffs who give them postcript soft that is incompete. Afterwards they tell you that problem is InDesign... Now that's a ripp off. A lot of them just don't like to upgrade, question of saving 1000 $. Most of the rips nowaday§s are just a piece of software, we buy something good, they should do the same. All the blabla, they tell is just a curtain to hide their own incomptetence.

Ok it's late, and sometimes I just get pissed off with their mumbo jumbo. Throwing some expensive words at you without explaining the real problem.

a frustrated carlow