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oursfan's picture
5 pencils

Help with an Adobe InDesign Problem when printing please

I am having the worst issue with InDesign and can not figure out what to do next. I have toubleshot this thing till I am blue in the face. Can someone please help.

Here is what I am having an issue with. I have created a document in InDesign CS3. It is a magazine layout and have lots of layers and all kinds of graphics and such. It looks great in the program itself and when I output it to a PDF. Well, it looks great on the screen that is. The problem occurs when I send the document to the printer. When I do that, I get all kinds of problems in the print out. A bunch of the text boxes and graphic boxes that are transparent are visible on the print out. It is almost as if the boxes were transferred over to the printout. Not sure what the deal is. It does not look like this on the screen. Only when I print it out.

I have tried printed to a postscript printer and to a regular non-postscript printer and the problem still occurs. The crazy thing is this. I sent the same document to our print house to do a proof and it comes back fine. So, I am thinking that it is something in the transfer from my PC to the printer. I setting or something that I am missing. I could be wrong though. Has anybody had this issue before or know what in the heck is going on?

I have attached a PDF with 2 pages on it. The first page is what I see on the screen and the second page is a scan of what is printed out. Notice the different shades in the text and picture boxes.

Someone please help!

AttachmentSize
example.pdf402.99 KB

Commenting on this Forum topic is closed.

ireid's picture
1283 pencils

Sounds like a transparency flattening issue.

Check your print settings. . . it might be that the printer cannot rip the transparency (i.e. level 2 or 3 postscript) Maye you could try exporting a few pages as EPS and then opening them in Illustrator to see if the problem occurs when doing so.

"Try not, Do! or do not, there is no try."
-Yoda

gwells's picture
1711 pencils

what settings are you creating the PDF with? generally, when i have a bunch of transparency effects, i set the export up as pdfx1a and then change it from PDF4 to PDF7 or 8.

duprasil's picture
16 pencils

I had the same problem. jHouse is right. The best test is open in Photoshop.

Ija

mmakire's picture
4 pencils

Something else to try. I learned at a Production InD. Seminar that sdometimes InD can get confused when flattening transparent raster images layered over vector elements. The trick is to set all elements on the page to a 99% transparency which forces InD to flatten the entire page.

miklad's picture
118 pencils

In the past I've had this issue - seems to be only with a few printers tho.

What i did was layer the InDesign - as in, Images and non-transparencies at the bottom, then a Transparencies layer, then finally all text on a top layer.

Not sure if it'd work for you, but give it a go?

Miklad

'Keeps losing his mojo, then finding it again'.

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