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Printing problems with PDF from InDesign

UserPost

12:12 pm
January 27, 2012


inkspot

New Member

posts 1

I have a digital printer that I work with that did a job for me this morning and I pointed out a problem with the image that had a ragged bitmap edge where the clipping path should of been. His first response was, "Are you using InDesign?" I told him that I have always used it. He told me that when issues like this come up it usually is InDesign. He also said that he rarely has problems with Illustrator CS 3 and higher. He asked if I saved or printed the pdf. We tried both ways and still getting problems with lines going through images & shapes from the way InDesign is cutting up the document for the pdf.


My vendor currently has a Konica C6000 but has also had the problems with the 6501 and Docucolor 8000.


My routine is to save a PDF-X1A from InDesign CS3 with all colors converted to CMYK and transparency flattener set to high resolution.


I can send screen snaps of the image problem. This is a big problem that I think Adobe should have the handle on. 

2:08 pm
January 27, 2012


Jongware

Member

posts 763

It sounds to me that printer just can't handle the live transparency in your PDF. Even though it's not a problem from InDesign, Adobe already provided a fix by allowing you to work around it: export to a dumbed-down PDF that no longer uses live transparency.

2:35 am
January 30, 2012


mayoor

Member

posts 31

But Jongware, doesnt exporting to PDF-X1a (which inkspot is doing as a routine) flattens the transparency. So,  how come the printer is having a problem with the transparency

6:18 pm
January 30, 2012


Bob Rubey

Member

posts 30

I'm with mayoor. To my understanding, PDFx1a (v1.3) is basically a "lowest common denominator" approach that most printers should be able to handle. And in the PostScript and distill method, the act of PostScripting in itself does the flattening, so it doesn't really matter what PDF version you distill to, it's never going to be any better than a PDFx1a.

What inkspot may not be doing, and he can correct me if I'm wrong, is checking the transparency flattening before exporting to PDF to eliminate possible problems. I'm not going to go into details because Michael Murphy has a good video on the subject: http://www.theindesigner.com/p…..ner_23.mp4

The video is from 2006, but the Flattener Preview really hasn't changed much through the versions.