Comments on: Eliminating YDB (Yucky Discolored Box) Syndrome

By: Max

Max — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:44:20 +0000

your solution worked perfectly – thank you very very much indeed!

By: Edd G

Edd G — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 09:51:10 +0000

Again you’re a star!
I didn’t have any spots [phew!]
And the seams or thin white lines that appear on the .pdf display do not print.

I’ve advised the Mag of the situation and asked them to trial it before publication but the proof will be in the pudding as it were come November when the mag is published!

Many thanks for all your help and for helping me and countless others with this pig of a problem!

By: Claudia McCue

Claudia McCue — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 13:29:58 +0000

Edd,
To determine if you have unwanted spot colors on the page, go the the Swatches panel menu and choose “Select all Unused.” Delete the selected swatches.

Now to determine if spot colors are used: Go to Window > Output > Separations Preview. If you see any spots listed, turn off the eyeballs by CMYK to see the remaining objects: those are the spot objects.

To fix any unwanted spots, either apply another (CMYK) swatch, or convert the spot color to CMYK.

Hope this helps! (And let me know if you find spots)

By: Edd G

Edd G — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 12:37:06 +0000

Claudia, Thank-you.
That is a big relief!

The requirement is for CMYK for the ad. I’ve made sure all the colours in ’swatches’ are CMYK but how do I know if there are any spot’s on the page? Sorry if this is outside of this thread parameters.

By: Claudia McCue

Claudia McCue — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 16:12:10 +0000

Edd,
I forgot to add — the reason you don’t see the lines and other artifacts in the Interactive PDF is that it’s a later-version PDF (v. 5 or above). Thus, transparency is not flattened, and you don’t see the “seams.”

By: Claudia McCue

Claudia McCue — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:30:13 +0000

Edd,

The white lines do not print; they are a display artifact in Acrobat. If they bother you, go to the Page Display preferences in Acrobat, and turn OFF Smooth Line Art.

The lines are indications that transparent objects have been flattened during PDF creation. This happens when you create a PDF with version 4 compatibility (for example, PDF/X-1a). To get rid of the white box (or missing shadows), turn on Overprint preview in Acrobat (launching Output Preview in the Print Production tools will do this). You’ll only see this if you have spot colors in the file. Make sure you do not have spot components that are intended to print as CMYK (since you’re sending to a mag pub, I suspect everything should be CMYK, but that’s not always the case).

Short story: if your file is built correctly, ignore the lines and any white boxes or absent shadows, if they appear correctly when you turn on Overprint Preview.

By: Edd G

Edd G — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 10:41:35 +0000

HELP!!
I’m trying to export a full page advert created in ID CS5 to a high quality pdf to send to a magazine publisher.
They have requested a pdf of 300 – 350 dpi including bleed & Trim.

When I create a pdf I get the YDB, i’ve tried ‘Eric’s’ formula above which has eliminated YDB but has now given a feint white outline box where the YDB was before.
If I produce an interactive pdf the problem totally disappears but I can’t include the bleed or trim on this.
I’ve tried the total rastering also.

Please help, the artwork deadline is fast approaching!!

By: Stuart Beatty

Stuart Beatty — Wed, 04 May 2011 01:54:08 +0000

Using a Canon C1 Imagepress. None of the suggestions worked for me. I don’t think it’s got anything to do with colour management – well, not for me anyway. What DID work, finally, was, in the print dialogue box in InDesign, clicking “Printer”. clicking the drop-down to “Fiery features”, clicking the “Full properties” button, selecting the “Colour” tab, and checking the “Composite overprint” check box. Fortunately this problem doesn’t occur often! Adding a second colour to the background colour fixes the problem about 95%.

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 19:42:51 +0000

This trick does work and i don’t have to use step 2 as pointed out above, the only downside is that the vector elements are now raster so they get affected by the output profile in the rip. I have the RIP set up so the vector elements are not touched by the output profile and this is why the YDB syndrome appears. The way we get around that is to convert the raster files with the output profile and RIP the postscript files without a profile.

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 06:08:10 +0000

It’s great to have access to these forums and discussions.

I understand some of the gripes from the gurus here, but really this is what these places are for – and let’s be honest the production managers of old are few and far between these days so everyone needs all the help they can get.

Anyway the reason I’ve posted is not to carry on the banter but rather note that I discovered (with the help of all the posts here) how to dismiss the issue discussed. My ID file when PDF’d had a problem printing a text drop shadow over a transparent background leaving that dreaded grey box. Simply by switching the CMYK colour correction in the ‘colour options’ print dialogue to ‘no correction’ on our offices Xerox Docu-centre IV the grey box disappeared on my following print out. Only explanation might be that the printer is over compensating – as always trying to be too clever for it’s own good.

Hope this helps someone.

PS No spot colours in my job – only CMYK all the way.