transparencies

[mikimoto810]

Hello,

 

  I recently bought Designer & Photo and I'm learning by trial and error, and google. I've been trying to figure out how to flatten a transparency. I imported a logo pdf (that was created in AutoCad) with added text (don't remember what I used to add text). I am trying to use that image to have business cards printed but the company told me

 

"In your case, I have checked your files and the quality is up to our standard, however sadly, the designs you have used contain transparencies which are not rendered properly by our system. While this is not always apparent in the creation flow, it can sometimes result in adverse effects when printed."

 

and that,

 

"You will have to send us amended files with these transparencies flattened."

 

In Designer it comes up as only 1 layer, so I'm unclear about how to flatten it. I've attached in case you want to look at it.

 

Any help would be appreciated,

Bill

logo2.pdf

[MattP]

Hi Bill,

 

I had a quick look at this and an see the issue they're referring to. Open your PDF in Designer and go to the Layers panel. First, select the little white rectangle that has a small crop symbol next to the thumbnail of your image layer and then press Delete - you don't need that cropping rectangle as it's not helping anything. Now go to the Rectangle tool and draw a large rectangle that overlaps the whole document. Make it white. Now press Shift+Command+[ to make it go to the back. Now go to Export, select PDF and then choose the preset that says 'Flatten' and choose an appropriate DPI (anything around 300dpi would make a great business card - in your particular document, your page is about 28cm wide, so when they shrink this to business card size your DPI will increase anyway!). The resulting PDF contains no transparency.

 

If you wanted to see what you'd just fixed, try selecting that rectangle that you put at the back of the image and change its colour to red and the areas will show through the image :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

[Dave Harris]

Just to expand on that: "Flatten" doesn't get rid of transparency; instead it turns the entire document into a single bitmap. That's why the white rectangle is needed, to make sure the resulting bitmap is opaque.

 

A more general approach is to export with the PDF/X-3 preset. That will get rid of transparency directly, without turning anything into a bitmap unnecessarily, and without needing the white rectangle.

[Peterkaosa]

Hi Bill,

 

I had a quick look at this and an see the issue they're referring to. Open your PDF in Designer and go to the Layers panel. First, select the little white rectangle that has a small crop symbol next to the thumbnail of your image layer and then press Delete - you don't need that cropping rectangle as it's not helping anything. Now go to the Rectangle tool and draw a large rectangle that overlaps the whole document. Make it white. Now press Shift+Command+[ to make it go to the back. Now go to Export, select PDF and then choose the preset that says 'Flatten' and choose an appropriate DPI (anything around 300dpi would make a great business card - in your particular document, your page is about 28cm wide, so when they shrink this to business card size your DPI will increase anyway!). The resulting PDF contains no transparency.

 

If you wanted to see what you'd just fixed, try selecting that rectangle that you put at the back of the image and change its colour to red and the areas will show through the image :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

MattP: Out of curiosity: I tried to work this out, but I do not see any white rectangle in the layer panel, it all is one single image layer. You have a screenshot probably?

[dkistner1111]

This topic is of great interest to me, and I just found this discussion of PD/X-1 vs. PD/X-3

 

http://www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/index.html#RGB

 

I need to flatten transparencies for CreateSpace and have essentially been letting them do it for me because I didn't know how to do it in Designer, but I haven't always been happy with the results.

 

I did find this:

 

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/adobe-rgb.htm

 

So I don't think I'll be following the advice to switch to the Adobe color space. I'm just wondering if anyone has any caveats for using the PDF/X-3 export persona for book covers (or anything else) meant for printing on a digital press. Up until now, I've used PDF/X-1.