Spot colors and Transparency causing Overprint knock-out

Whenever I create a PDF from InDesign (CS3) I get missing artefacts/items on print production.
It is caused by a transparent PSD file being laid over a spot color.
I print a /ps file and then Distill to Press Quality.
Overprint preview in ACrobat Pro shows what I need by overprint off I lose info - this causes immense problems at all the pre-pre studios I use.
Any pointers to a cure/reason?
(more info if needed upon request)

For one, please do not go through PostScript , rather export to PDF directly. When doing so, you may want to do the transparency flattening either during PDF export (i.e. in Indesign) or later on in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
Going through PostScript/distilling adds extra potential for issues.
Next, any print service provider who is not in a position to deal reliably with overprints, does not deserve a contract from a high profile client. Rather, find print service providers who are up to the task. A decent print service provider should produce a result that is visually very very close to what you see in Adobe Acrobat Pro having turned on Overprint Simulation and Output Preview. If the output from a print service provider suffers from missing portions or other artifacts (as those that can be seen when Overprint simulation and Overprint Preview are turned off in Acrobat Pro) then that print service provider is simply failing.
Finally - as pointed out by Jon, the best approach is to keep the transparency in your PDFs alive and find print service providers that can deal with it (because for example they have a workflow based on the Adobe PDF Print Engine).
Olaf Druemmer
PS: ... or would you accept a week old bread rolls from your baker?

Similar Messages

Spot Colors and Transparency

In posters, brochures etc. designed with gradients,(AI10) when saving, I always get the "when spot colors are used w/transparency, changing them to process colors outside of illustrator can generate unexpected results."
My printer wants spot colors and that's what he gets. I use grays a lot 'cause client can't afford colors. He prepares the plates with the required dot intensities which go to another printer who prints all. So far, things have worked out OK. However, I worry when clients want photos included, and I'm not sure what I'm doing is just luck, or the way to go.
I open a .jpg in PS7,duplicate it as grayscale .psd,adjust and drag it on to a 150 or 300 ppi transparent background and save it. It's then "placed" in AI where it's needed and finished there.
With only 1 previous experience working in this manner, the brochure worked fine. So, just what exactly is that darn warning above telling me?
Do I continue to ignore it as I did the first time? Any suggestions for working with photos? I'd like to be more than just "lucky" and not have a failed work as a final product....thanks much...........m

It's telling you that if you are printing full process CMYK, then the spot colors will be converted to CMYK and it's not guaranteed that the spot color will look the same. There is always a shift in color gamut when converting to CMYK. As you are only printing to spot colors or grey, the warning doesn't apply.

Pantone spot colour and transparency don't work together

Using indesign CS5, I make a pantone solid spot colour background.
I import two of the same photos: one a greyscale circular pshop file with transparency surrounding the circle ( the file is not flattened).
The other is the same photo, but I make a clipping path around the circle and then flatten the file and save as a jpg.
Both photos are put on top of the pantone solid color background in Indesign.
I export the indesign file as pdfx 1a using pdf-presets under the file menu.
If I open the pdf in Acrobat and open the "output preview" panel and turn off the "simulate overprinting" box, the pshop photo disappears, but the jpg with the clipping path is fine. They print as they appear: one disappears (Pshop file) and one is OK: the jpg.
If you import the pdfx 1a pdf back into Indesign, you will see that the pshop image has disappeared.
I understand this happens to others not just me. is there a fix?
Does it work with all a spot colours and transparency?
If I save as a higher version of acrobat (say 7). The pdf looks fine and imports back into indesign fine.
And if I send to the RIP the RIP seems to handle it fine. But if I take that Acrobat 7 file and put on a page and export as pdx-1a, I get the same problem

Spot colors and Transparency do not play well together, but can be used together if you follow some rules.
jpg does not support transparency. If you're working within InDesign, you can, and should save as and use psd or tiff. Tiff supports transparency if toggled during the Save As dialog.
x1/a pdf does not support transparency, hence it was lost. In my environment, Press Quality PDF has never failed me, but High Quality and x4 have added benefits of Color Management.
Search for Yucky Discolored Box Syndrome - read the results from InDesign Secrets

After saving a PDF with a Spot UV layer, all of the highlights and detail under the spot color are flattened in Overprint Preview. What am I missing here?

I'm attempting to print some business cards with a Spot UV coating. I have a layer above the artwork with a spot color (set to green per the printer's request). Underneath is a logo, essentially a red circle with some highlights and depth. My issue is that, after exporting a PDF, all of the highlights and detail on the red circle disappear in Overprint Preview (it's there when I hide the Spot UV layer, but missing when I hide the Spot Color). What can I do to retain that information?
Thanks!

Let me know if you need different screen grabs. Thanks in advance.

Screen transparency doesn't knock out black fully in InDesign

I started experiencing a situation in which the "screen" transparency function doesn't knock out the black background of a logo fully. The black instead of becoming fully transparent shows the background color in a lighter shade. The "multiply" function however works perfectly.
This is happening whether I am using pixel files such as logo in tiff or a text box with black background and white lettering over a color background. So it isn't about the nature of the object I want to make transparent. This is happening on the computer I use at work but not on other computers. I started experiencing it with CS4 and was hoping that it would disappear when upgrading to CS5 but the problem wasn't resolved.
Been looking around the program in and out to try to understand why but haven't located any reason yet.

I'm pretty good at reading between the lines, but I have no idea what you are doing, so perhaps you'd provide some more details, and some screen shots. You can embed an image in a post by using the camera icon on the web page like this:
Please also tell us the OS and version, and the version and patch level of ID.

Indexed color and transparency in PNGs

I'm working with a software developer who is revising his subtitle rendering application to meet my company's specifications. The renderer produces an image sequence, and we agreed on using PNGs with a transparent background as the format for the image sequence. The renderer is producing PNGs in Indexed Color mode, so Photoshop and Windows Photo Viewer recognize the transparent background, but Premiere Pro CS5.5 and CS6 don't. I can re-save one of the PNGs after switching it to RGB mode in Photoshop, and then Premiere Pro recognizes the transparency. I'm not surprised by any of that. What I am surprised by is that the software developer says he can import the same PNGs, without switching to RGB mode, into his copy of Premiere Pro CS3, and Premiere recognizes the transparency.
Is there anything I can do besides batch processing in Photoshop to get Premiere Pro CS5.5 or 6 to recognize the transparency in an Indexed Color PNG? Has something changed since CS3? I did look under Modify>Interpret Footage to make sure that my Ignore Alpha Channel box is unchecked for the PNGs, but I can't find another relevant setting to check, and I can't figure out why CS3 would be able to recognize an Indexed Color PNG.

PNG's need to be RGB.
CS3 was a long time ago..
You can however import gif in indexed color with transparancy.

Finding spot color and process color

Dear all,
I used the following code to find the spot color used in the document.
var length=app.activeDocument.spots.length;
for(i=0;i<length;i++){
alert(app.activeDocument.spots[i].color);
It is showing CMYK Color as the output.
Can anyone tell me wheather it is a correct output.I want to identify all the spot color in the current active document.
Also please help me finding out the Process color used in the document.What is the diffence between these two ?
Regards,
Sanat

Sanat,
Even if a color is Spot, it still has to have CMYK or RGB values (depending on the color mode of the document) to tell Illustrator what color to display it as.
Beyond that, though, you're going to run into another problem anyway: Any Swatch that is defined as Global is going to be counted as a Spot Color. (I've been complaining about this for years.)
For example:
var docRef=app.activeDocument;
var count=docRef.spots.length;
alert(count);
for(i=0;i<count;i++){
alert(docRef.spots[i].name);
Run that in a CMYK document in which you have removed all unused palette items. You'll find that it returns [Registration] as a spot color, just because it's set to Global. Now doubleClick the Black Swatch. Set it to Global (but not Spot). The sript will tell you there are two Spot colors.
JET

Problems with spots colors and printing

Hello everyone,
I am currently working on a business card for a client. The design calls for white text with an inner shadow to sit above a bar with a gradient. One of the colors in the gradient is reflex blue. When I export the file to a pdf and try to print it the text box fills with white and the graident bar changes colors and a portion of it becomes solid. I can fix the problem by printing the pdf as an image or removing the reflex blue and substituing it for another dark blue. However there really isn't a close match in cymk to Reflex Blue C. Is there a way I could continue using reflex blue ( incidentally that is one of the company colors) without these short of issues? If it helps I am using Indesign cs5, Acrobat X, Mac OS 10.6.8, using Creo Rip Software and Printing on a Xerox 700 digital press.

I tried putting the text on another layer but it didn't change anything. The only solution that has worked so far is changing the spot color, reflex blue, to a cmyk color. Here is a screen shot of the problem and some of my export options
Hopfully that helps. In a realted issue, is there a way of lowering the transperancy of a graphic that uses spot colors without changing the color? Once again the problem is reflex blue. When I lower the transparacy the color turns purplish. Thanks for the help

Special color and transparency

Just recently I encounter one problem in Illustrator. Text in special pantone color applied on the background and used drop shadow. After I converted to PDF using print ps and distilled. But in the PDF, i saw some white parts came out on the text instead of pantone. So I tried another method using export PDF. The result looked fine but it came out again after went trough the RIP. (We used Fuji celebral workflow).
Anybody can help?

Sounds like a transparency issue. Here is an InDesign tip that also applies to Illustrator:
http://indesignsecrets.com/eliminating-ydb-yucky-discolored-box-syndrome.php
You could also set the shadow to multiply.

IPhoto 4.0.3 color and Brightness problems when printing out photos.

In addition to my previous question, I forgot to mention that opening the iPhoto 4 JPEG photos in Photoshop also import as dark and reddish tinted. Help?

This color management thing gets pretty complicated. To get the best results you have to synch monitor calibration with camera and print settings.
There is also the difference between additive (light)and subtractive (pigment- ink) color. The monitor starts with black - 0%, adds red, green and blue to a pixel (picture element) and gets white 100%. A printer starts with white (paper) and when all the colors are added gets black - this is different then using true black ink.
So by their nature the display on the monitor and print are quite different. Typically monitors are set to maximum brightness and contrast. A photo appears light and less than saturated. Printing at BEST PHOTO lays on lots of ink dpi. So the print is going to be saturated and darker than the monitor image - for most users.
Professionals go to great effort to calibrate and control the effect of printing versus display. For us users it takes experimenting and experience to be able to judge the difference between display and output (print).
I have found that using Adobe RGB settings the photo as seen in PhotoShop is very close to the high quality print PhotoShop produces. That is why I do most adjustments in PhotoShop and use iPhoto for cropping and rotating pictures for the web or email.
The key to getting the best print in iPhoto is your printers color management settings.
Peter

Is it possible to add and adjust css3 box-shadow and its effects... color and transparency with mucow?

Does this make sense on how to apply it?
#{param_itemUID} .rect{
background-color:{param_backgroundColor};
width:{param_width}px;
height:{param_height}px;
-pie-box-shadow:{param_xshadow}px; {param_yshadow}px; {param_shadowblur}px; {param_ShadowColor};
box-shadow:{param_xshadow}px;{param_yshadow}px;{param_shadowblur}px;rgba({param_ShadowCol or},{param_opacity});
Thanks!

You should be able to do those things with a mucow.
If it's not working, could you share more of your mucow - maybe just send me the whole thing so I can take a look (lbushore (at) adobe.com)

Issue with Gaussian Blur and Spot Colors

Wondering if anyone has a solution to this issue.
Setup: We are using CS4 + CS5 Illustrator on Mac OS 10.5.X and 10.6.X
We created a spot color radial gradient filled circle over a background of the same spot color. The gradient went from 100% of the color down to 2%. We then applied a gaussian blur set to 50 pixels so that we had a nice smooth transition from the circle blurring outwards over the background with the blur blending into the spot color background.
The problem arises when we select "Retain Spot Colors" on the blur. It fills the gradient circle with 100% solid color (but at the 2% range of the gradient so it appears white) and deletes the blur effect. If we don't select "Retain Spot Colors", it converts the blur to process and we get a banding on our printouts where the spot background and CMYK gaussian meet.
We tried the gaussian blur set at 5 pixels all the way up to 55 in 10 pixel increments but nothing worked. We tried different spot colors, same issue. We know we can do the background in Photoshop and import it into Illustrator as a workaround, but we are constantly editing and changing files and would like to keep everything in Illustrator.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to solve this or if there is even a solution. We have not tried Illustrator 5.5 and do not want to invest the money in the upgrade yet. We would prefer to stay with both CS4 and CS5.
Thank you for any input.

Hi Mike,
Okay, I have some new information that changes things. I misunderstood what the issue was from the designer. My apologies in advance for the confusion. There are actually two issues but they are somewhat related.
Issue 1:
We are concerned with banding on the outside of a spot color gradient with a gaussian blur over a patterned background of the same spot color. We do not know if this is becasue of the number of pixels on the blur, the version of Illustrator, the blending of the blur into the patterned background, etc... While the banding looks slight on screen it is more pronounced when printed. There are many variables and we have tried everything we can think of to create a smooth transition but we keep getting some banding.
The first image shows what happens when the Preserve Spot Colors in the Raster Effects Settings (found under the Effect menu) is unchecked. We believe that the spot color is being treated as CMYK and causing the blur to be a slightly different color than the spot color background thus causing the banding.
The second image shows what happens when we select Preserve Spot Colors. We lose the blur.
The third image is what we are trying to achieve over a over a patterned background of the same spot color. This was achieved with the Preserve Spot Colors unchecked and also unchecking Overprint Preview in the Separations Preview Palette. However, this brings us right back to the issue with the Preserve Spot Color being unchecked.
Issue 2:
The issue is that we want to print a spot color gradient with a gaussian blur (over 50 pixels). In order to preview the blur effect correctly we have to uncheck the Preserve Spot Colors in the Raster Effects Settings (found under the Effect menu). However, we have recently found out that this will not work with the software our printers use to do separations. If we check the Preserve Spot Color for the separator, it turns the blur into a large square of color (see screensnap below). We have played around with the Add: x Around Object setting in Raster Effects but it has not helped.
3. If we do not select "Preserve Spot Color", the blur looks correct but it is no longer a spot color but CMYK when separated.
I hope that isn't too confusing and makes sense. Again, apologies for the mixup on my part originally. Thanks again for any help.

Overprint preview spot colors

Hey All,
one of my collegues brought something to my attention and we are wondering why Illustrator does it. Here is the situation.
We create two layers. Layer one contains some objects filled with process colors.
The second layer contains an object filled with a spot color and the layer is set to non-printing.
When you open the separations panel and turn on overprint preview it seems that the spot color is converted (temporarily) to process. When you turn of the spot plate the object still show and starts to disappear when you turn of the process plates.
The spot object does however disappear when it's plate is hidden once it's layer is set to printing.
Why does Illustrator do this?
We expect the spot object to disappear when the plate is turned off in any situation.

You are right experiencing the same here, and agree with you that the spot should not show in cmyk when the layer is set to not print.
Turn off show (or the visibility eyeball) for the spot layer if this bothers you.
Looks like a bug, I believe have originally seen many versions ago, and never been resolved cause not many people asked to get this fixed.

How to find out that an art item has spot color using script?

Hi all,
I have a number of art items on a document, some of them are filled with spot colors and some of them are with process color.
Is there any method by which I can find out which color type(spot or process) is applied to the selected art item?
Thanx in advance...

Thanx for the reply carlos....
But I am not able to use "icolor.typename". There is nothing like "typename" showing in the properties.
I am using it like this:
var app:com.adobe.illustrator.Application = Illustrator.app;
                                        var pathArt:PathItem;
                                        var allPaths:PathItems           = doc.pathItems;
                                        if ( app.documents.length > 0 && doc.pathItems.length > 0)
                                                       var colorValue:com.adobe.illustrator.Color;
                                                       //Fill color to the selected object.
                                                       for (var i:int = 0; i < doc.pathItems.length ; ++i)
                                                                      pathArt = allPaths.index(i);
                                                                      if(pathArt.selected)
                                                                                     colorValue = pathArt.fillColor;
                                                                                     trace(colorValue.typename);              //But colorValue doesn't show any property like "typename".
Do am i missing some thing?
Thanks...

Mixing Spot Colors & Spot and CMYK

My recent project required the use of two spot colors, one resting on top of the other one. But, when the project went to press, the top spot color - used on a font, looked horrible against the spot color - used for the background color. Not at all like the file. I would guess that these two colors mixed and created a different effect than intended. How can I prevent this in the future? How do I set up my InDesign files with this in mind?
Also, the same situation as above, but mixing spot colors and CYMK (one on top of the other). Suggestions, ideas, do's and don't? How do I set up my file correctly?
Finally, how do I mix 2 spot colors to create a 3rd spot color in InDesign? Is this possible?

It sounds as though you had unwanted overprinting of spot colors. And if you previewed the file with Overprint Preview, you could have seen this undesired effect. Did you see a contract proof of project before going to press? If so, did the proof have the same undesired result?
As for mixing 2 inks... you can do this, but you really are not creating a 3rd spot color. With 2 spot inks already created in the swatch panel, select New Mixed Ink Swatch from the flyout. Here you can select any inks and the percentage mix to create many variations.
--Looks like Robert and Ozzwoman beat me to it--

Spot colors and Transparency causing Overprint knock-out

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