Michael Shonle

Hi, thanks again for looking into this. I did just finally figure it out: The trick is to put the layer that has the undercoat pattern on the very top, set it to a Spot Color, and set it to Overprint. It makes it a bit tricky to edit things and see what you're getting (you have to hide the layer for most editing, then turn it on before exporting). (It was accidentally sort of working sometimes with it at the bottom, so that misled me for a while). (the 'effect' I need is not an effect per se, superficially it just looks like a solid color on top of a graphics pattern; the trick is getting a white spot-color undercoat under certain parts of it). Thanks again! -Mike

Hi, thanks for the response. Not quite either one of those, though possibly the 'cutout' version could be made to work by having a colors layer under the graphics layer. I'm wanting to have the text be 'normal' on top of the graphics image (which it normally would do, nothing special, e.g. be its color and 'knock out' the graphics) except that I want it to not 'knock out' the white spot color areas underneath them all.

Hi, I'm working on a project that has a selective white undercoat, then a graphics (image layer) background texture, and then text / lines on top. I want the text/lines to 'knock out' the graphics image but not the white undercoat. If I set the 'overprint' option on the text color, then it doesn't cut out the graphics layer, but if I don't set it, then it knocks both the graphics and the white undercoat. Is there some way e.g. to set the 'image' to also get knocked out, or some other easy way to do this? Thanks. -Mike

Thanks so much for your fast and accurate response! I was looking it at from the wrong point of view. Upon re-reading the documentation, it still wasn't clear which way it applied, so maybe consider being more explicit there? Thanks again, -Mike

Hi, just starting out with Designer, so not sure if it's operator error or a bug, but I'm having problems with an Overprinting Spot Color getting "knocked out" by other items on other layers. I defined an Overprinting Spot Color and used it to fill an area on one layer, then added various text and line items on an upper layer. When I export it as PDF/X-1a, the area that’s supposed to be overprinted gets knocked out by the other items. Interestingly, I noticed that if I specify an Opacity of less than 100%, then it seems to keep the overprint for lines but not for text. I have all the layer modes set to ‘Passhrough’ except the first (which is only used for testing the overprint region and not included in the final output. So, is there something I’m doing wrong or is this a bug? Thanks. -Mike KBGraphicsOverlay.afdesign