Help with an Adobe InDesign Problem when printing please
oursfan (6 points) | Mon, 2009-02-02 19:51I 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!
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| example.pdf | 402.99 KB |
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
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.
Ha! I ran in to this problem a long time ago. I dont know why I said Ha! but it is strange isnt it. Lines appear around masks and it all looks crap.
What you want to do - IS NOT WORRY! When this goes to lytho - it will be absolutely fine 100% GUARANTEED NO GIMMICKS!!!
What you need to do when you print it out on a desktop printer - is open the PDF in Photoshop. Try printing it out from there - and see how it all disappears!
Weird huh!?
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BRANDING | PRINT | WEB
www.jhousedesign.com
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"Did I really try to find an "undo" button on a vending machine?"
Jack
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BRANDING | PRINT | WEB
www.jhousedesign.com
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Thanks! I will try this now. It may take some time though because I have 68 pages in the document.
The PDF settings are custom from our printer. They gave us the settings to use to export the PDF in a form that they need in order to do the printing for us.
I did some messing around with it and found out that it does in fact have something to do with the number of layers on each page. Or lack there of. On pages that had a lot of depth but not enough layers on the pallet is where the error is occurring. I have to go back and devote everything on the page to a separate layer to get it to stop. That could give me up to 30 layers on one page. I will try Jhouses trick now.
I had the same problem. jHouse is right. The best test is open in Photoshop.
Ija
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.
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'.