Eliminating YDB (Yucky Discolored Box) Syndrome
Steve Werner has posted an excellent solution to the Dreaded White Box (DWB) syndrome, wherein you see white boxes around shadows and other transparency effects interacting with spot color content. The answer, as Steve points out, is for your print service provider to turn on PostScript Overprint at the RIP. (And, for correct viewing in Acrobat, turn on Overprint Preview.)
But there’s something similar to the DWB syndrome that occurs on many digital printers, from our in-house laser printers up to the big boys like the Xerox iGen3. This is YDB: Yucky Discolored Box syndrome, wherein, well, yucky discolored boxes appear under shadows when printed.
The discoloration is due to the printer’s RIP not correctly exercising overprint. Even a gen-u-wine PostScript Level 3 printer such as my beloved Xerox 8400 can’t pull this off.
I’ve tried converting all my inks to process, and turning on “Simulate Overprint,” and I still get the YDB syndrome. Previously, I’d been resorting to using Acrobat’s “Print as Image” as a solution, but Adobe engineer Matt Phillips opened my eyes to an easier method during the Seattle Master Class, right there in InDesign. Thanks, Matt! I have to say “Duh! Why didn’t I think of this?” The answer is to have InDesign act as a RIP.
Create a Transparency Flattener Preset that completely rasterizes everything:
- Edit > Transparency Flattener Presets, click on “High” as a starting point, and then click “New.”
In the ensuing dialog box, yank the raster/vector slider all the way to the left. Set the linework resolution to the printer’s res (say, 600), and set the gradient/mesh resolution to, oh, 150. (I think you’ll find shadow appearance satisfactory at 150. If not, go to 300.)
Save as a new Flattener Preset. - File > Print, and under Output, choose Composite CMYK, and CHECK the “Simulate Overprint” checkbox. Under Advanced, select your all-raster flattener.
InDesign creates a conglomerate sheet o’pixels—vector and text will be rasterized at the linework resolution, and shadows and feathered edges are generated at the gradient/mesh resolution. There’s good news and bad news, of course. The good news is that your output will look correct—no YDB syndrome. The bad news is that an exceedingly complex page could take some time to process, and could generate a big honking print file to clog up your printer.
Just to remind that you can create and assing this specific Claudia flattening preset to only specific spreads (via the Pages palette flyout menu) but apply another flattening setting to the rest of the document via the Advanced panel.
On my printers at work and at home I was getting YDB until I turned OFF all colour managment settings in the printer driver and used the correct ICC profile from InDesign. Hope this helps.
I think Peter is right, the YDB syndrome is most of the time due to the printer driver applying different color managent policy to vector and raster objects. Turning off these driver setting and allowing Indesign to do it is the solution.
Great post, Claudia, and welcome to InDesignSecrets.com!
If you choose an RGB-based printer (like my inexpensive Epson C88), InDesign even warns you to turn off color management in the driver. On the Color Management panel of the Print dialog box, to the right of the Let InDesign Determine Color choice is a little blue “i” for Info. In the Warning section below InDesign warns, “Remember to disable color management in the printer driver dialog box.”
I do find the Epsons easier to deal with than my Xerox Phaser (don’t get me wrong–I love it). But the print dialog for the Phaser offers only two options: “PostScript printer determines color” or “No color management.” Either gives me YDB. The only way I get clean output with decent color is to take the all-raster approach, and it’s worked for clients with HP PretendScript printers. If I’m missing something in the print dialog, please point me there. I do have a surprising capacity for ignoring large flashing red icons
i also have a phaser and i see the same things when printing spot colors with transparency. would love to know about any tricks in the driver/printer settins.
Welcome, Claudia! It’s wonderful to have you as a contributor to InDesignSecrets! Y’all can learn more about Claudia by clicking the Contributors button in the navigation bar along the left side of the screen.
Yes, the whole double-color-managed thing can cause problems. InDesign color manages stuff and then the printer driver goes and color manages some more. You definitely need to be clear about when the printer driver (in the Print dialog box) will be changing colors and when it won’t be.
That said, I think Claudia’s (and Matt’s
) tip is a great one. One more note about this: I think you have to have at least one item on each spread that is transparent, or else the flattener won’t kick in. But even a small black square set to .01 opacity should do it.
Josh,
In addition to the “rasterize everything” approach, I have success with this:
-”PostScript printer determines color” in the InDesign print dialog
-under Image Quality in the Printer dialog, I choose:
Print Quality: High/Resolution
Photo and Color Correction: Commercial Press
This achieves decent output on plain paper, and does not suffer from either DWB or YDB.
Of course, this may be specific to the Phaser. I am curious what works for others.
Interestingly, my 4-yr-old OkiData 5300n (clone PS3 rip), a 4/C toner laser printer, has no problem with overset settings. I print shadowed type on top of colored backgrounds (including spot Pantone) quite frequently and have never seen the YDB syndrome…. knock on wood.
FWIW I use the stock High Res flattener and keep the color management turned off for the printer.
I still think OkiData’s are one of the unsung heroes of the graphic design industry (I’ve ranted about this on the podcast before). Their clone RIPs are phenomenal and this makes their printers really affordable.
I was glad to see that in the latest Macworld magazine, an OkiData is one of their top picks for a color laser printer.
And I’ve printed to Ricoh Aficio printers (also genuine PS L3) that have no problem and require no special treatment. My take on this is that devices may use true PS L3, but don’t exercise every single PS operator.
I’m looking forward to the PDF Print Engine being implemented in desktop printers. Of course, by then, we’ll have come up with something else that looks good onscreen but is challenging to print: “my holographic 3D effects don’t look right on my Mattel printer!”
Color laser printer technology has changed rapidly in recent years. I loved the Xerox Phaser that they loaned me for a while. They make great printers. But when the printer went “home” recently, I purchased a Dell color laser printer for $500 (it’s a Lexmark under the hood).
It’s really very adequate, uses Genuine Adobe PostScript 3 (which I insist on… been burned too many times by clones) and although I had a few problems getting it to show upon my network (ironically, I had more problems getting it working on my Windows machine than my Mac), tech support was good, it’s working now, and I can print wirelessly to it via my Airport Express router.
What is somewhat crazy-making, however, is that the printer is $500 (and comes with toner for 5000 pages), but the toner refill is about $400!
I completely agree with you, Claudia, that the PDF Print Engine is the way to go. But I don’t expect to see it in low-end office printers for quite some time.
We use a Xerox DocuColor 5065 (that’s a 250 in the Northern Hemisphere) which is nice, but the Fiery RIP it uses still gets the discolored boxes. The Xerox uses some fancy Spot-color matching software to translate Spots to CMYK values. Only problem is their values don’t match Adobe’s and I’m told there is no easy way to export the Color Lookup Table out of the Fiery, so it can be made into a Swatch for InDesign. I think if the RIP and InDesign both use the same CMYK values the problem will disappear!
David said:
But when the printer went “home” recently, I purchased a Dell color laser printer for $500 (it’s a Lexmark under the hood).
While Lexmark makes many printers for Dell, unless something’s changed recently, the Dell color lasers are actually manufactured by FujiXerox.
Claudia,
I have followed all your instructions, and it has solved the YDB but has created another. I have used two blocks of grey, and they now have a yellow tinge to them. Any ideas?
Jason, have you tried using ID’s Ink Manager to convert all spots to process during the printing process? That may be an end run around the problem.
Thanks Anne-Marie. I had tried this in Acrobat when we were trying to print PDFs. I tried “Print as Image” and “Convert All Spots to Process”. Both attempts failed- the boxes stayed and there was some wild color shifting as well. In the end using Photoshop as the rasterizer worked, but was a slow and unecessary step. I haven’t tried it in InDesign’s Ink Manager though.
What a huge help this was to me. I was ready to throw ID out the window. (Or my beloved Xerox 8400). Yippee!
Just a quick pointer on this thread.
I have got around this problem printing to an Epson R300 by exporting to a flattened pdf (the earlier pdf files could not handle layers). By doing this everything is flattened and, where necessary, rasterised.
Hope this helps.
Claudia, this works from getting the YDB out, but the printouts also came out less saturated on our Xerox lasers.
I don’t know if it is the same as YDB syndrome, but our InDesign files always suffer from Annoying Box Around a Graphic Syndrome. The graphics are generally those with transparency. We suffer from YDB on our laser jets (not a problem since these are for proofing), but the ABAG syndrome occurs on the Xerox printers in our print center. Are the solutions here the same or are there special tricks to overcoming this dreading syndrome?
One more thing–We PDF our files (to protect ourselves from their “graphic designer improvement program”) using the High Res Print option as a jumping point. We set our crops and such there.
Melissa,
The big Xerox printers (like the Docucolor and iGen boxes) also suffer from YDB. Try some of the workarounds and let us know if they help.
I use a Roland print and cut machine in a signmaking environment and have found that saving the file as a tiff eliminates the problem, however colours sometimes change which is a problem in itself!
Actually, you designers are all idiots, Convert you spot colors to CMYK…Which shouldn’t be a problem since it is a four color printer. Oh, and just so you’re all aware, Black prints first on iGen’s, so dont stupidly overprint it.
Thank You! I tried some of the other work-arounds that others suggested but ultimately the one Claudia proposed is the only thing that worked on our HP LaserJet 9500.
I have tried the work-around and what has happened is that the entire background, not just what’s under transparency, becomes YDB. THe entire background becomes lighter. Also, I have turned off the color managment in the printer driver and have had no success. How would a novice such as myself know what the right color settings are in ID if that also needs to be reset? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
Claudia
I get gray box under shadow type that is printed to a ps file then distilled. Tried your method but no success. The DGB is still there.
I never have any trouble with the YDB from my Xerox (Techtronix) Phaser 7700 but I do when I send my file to be printed on an iGen. I’ll ask them to eliminate the color management in the printer driver and see how that works.
In reply to Person from April 3rd! YES!!! After much debate and troubleshooting–we found that our Print Center (YES our PRINT CENTER) was requiring Pantone Spot for production on a XEROX CMYK machine!!!! Hello! We woke up and went right back to good ole CMYK. What good is a Pantone if you’re not even separating?? I could only wish you had posted months and months back! Sadly, though you CALLED US idiots…Not to sound tragic, but we were just doing what we told to do. Being a self-taught graphic designer (and not too bad a one at that) leaves you at the mercy of the production end. This leads to mistrust and anger because I just knew that the problem was fixable. Our PRINT CENTER had the nerve to tell us that InDesign couldn’t handle transparency/drop shadows when I had been using CMYK with transparency/drop shadows without an issue. So, in our defense–the idiocy can occur on both ends…
*I* certainly didn’t call anyone an idiot! I apologize on behalf of that poster, who must have been having a bad day.
Your print center isn’t misleading you: There *are* good reasons to send spot color files to printers like the Xerox machines: they have look-up tables that can accomplish better matches of the intended color if they receive spot info. However, the downside is, as you’ve see, YDB Syndrome. Some print centers note the spot-to-CMYK conversion numbers in the lookup tables, and modify the InDesign or Illustrator files to use those values. Then they send the jobs as CMYK, and all is well. It’s a workaround, but it’s an idea.
No, Claudia… not you. Someone earlier in the thread. Thanks for the great info!
The reason YDB happens is because the embedded color profile of the image with the transparency differs from the color profile of the object behind it. In order to make the transparency match perfectly, both the front and back object need to have the same ICC tag applied.
We are finally making the big switch to ID after years of Quark and immediately encountered YDB syndrome. Claudia’s remedy took care of the problem on our Ikon 650 printer. Thank you!
Turning off color management worked for me on a Canon C1 ImagePress. Thanks for the tip Peter Hutchinson.
pbc
Claudia, Will File ? Print, and under Output, choose Composite CMYK prevent the file from separating as the black and spot plate? I work at a newspaper where spot must be retained. Thanks
Linda: No, composite CMYK keeps the spot colors. To convert spot to process, you would use the Ink Manager.
Hi David, Thanks for the response. I just did a test file. When we send a job back to our dataflow, it will proof the seps and it did separate into CMYK instead of retaining the spot color. I then checked our online proof and it too is now cmyk because it is based on what prints. Maybe I’m missing something.
The file itself is still spot, but that doesn’t help when the job outputs for the presses.
Too bad you can’t edit your responses. My workaround is to create a mixed ink of 100%black and 1%of the color underneath. This seems to work on 2 files I’ve tested.
Opened pdf in Photoshop (which rasterizes entire file) and printed on Xerox 7700 and Wha-La YDB Syndrome was gone!
Jason Cutler, did you manage to find a solution for the Xerox machine? Because I’ve encountered the same problems on a Docutech 12.
Simulate overprint did not work and turning off CMYK-simulations on the EFI/FIERY EX12 RIP did also nothing.
Oh yeah, I used an cPDF sheetCMYK v1.3. The transparencies are flattened down and there are no spotcolors of what so ever.
I found this quite disturbing…
Brian, you mentioned that the front and back objects must share the same ICC tag. How do you do that?
Awesome post. I’ve been struggling with this problem for weeks and now it’s fixed (using the method you described). I can’t tell you how many print jobs I’ve made trying to get this straightened out. Finally. Thanks,
Tom
We produce only CMYK output (no spot) and this problem only appears if we write a pdf from InDesign that has both drop shadows and gradients present. If it only has either a drop shadow or a gradient, it appears fine. If we write it as an eps file, everything looks good.
Great forum! It helped me a lot in InDesign. However, I need to export to pdf since many times I have to do 100 copies of a 10 page document. That, as you know, would take forever to print in InDesign (CS4). However, when I go to print using Acrobat Reader I get my YDB back or my colors are very faded.
Any suggestions? Thanks so much!
Okay, I figured out how to export to PDF properly so you will not get a YDB.
1. Choose Export to pdf in InDesign and choose your save location.
2. Select the “Advanced” tab on the left list.
3. Under the Standard drop down box choose: PDF/X-1a:2001 (after a test print and your colors aren’t right, choose PDF/X-1a:2003 and test)
4. Select your saved flattener
5. Export to location!
I am useing a roland printer with roland versaworks
Can anything be done in the rip program to stop the yucky white box even when i change the setings as above if i save as a PDF i still get the box but if I save as a EPS no box any ideas for me?
David,
Are you saying that if you submit a PDF to the RIP you get the white box, but if you submit an EPS to the RIP you don’t? If so, this implies that the RIP doesn’t correctly process PDFs (or perhaps not the particular flavor of PDF you’re feeding it). Does the job involve spot colors? What settings are you using for the PDF?