Comments on: Screen Artifacts on Transparent PSDs in Exported PDFs Can Be Deceiving…Most of the Time.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:19:36 +0000

I don’t get it. My exported high-res PDFs have halos around the layer mask (PSD file). This was the case with any exported PDF where the color was converted to working SWOP, but was correct if I chose ‘no color conversion’ (not ideal as I’d rather keep source graphics as RGB).

Saving as a layered TIFF (with transparency support) does nothing to help the issue. Yet it seems to for Bob, et al.

Anyone have any tips?

(ID CS4, Photoshop CS3, Acrobat X 10.1)

By: Sandra

Sandra — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 03:14:48 +0000

Great post and really helpful information. But I am still getting stuck and am finding it hard to find help. I am using CS3.

We have artwork created in illustrator that is a combination of vector artwork and placed .psd files (with transparency)

These individual image files are then placed into indesign, to have text and barcodes etc added. We then export them as pdfs and send to the printers.

The problem I have is that the psd images have the black outline described above. Illustrator won’t let me place a tiff with transparency, so that fix isn’t working for me.

I have tried using an illustrator eps instead of ai and that gets rid of the black lines but then I get faint white boxes (stiching?) when it’s placed in indesign.

I know that it is not supposed to show up in print, BUT it does. We missed it on the press check, and I will talk to the printer. In the meantime I was hoping that there would be some clever folk with a solution??

By: mel

mel — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 01:31:11 +0000

Thank you!
Also some images in pdfs aren’t showing up at all on the preview.

By: Kaiti

Kaiti — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 23:42:19 +0000

omg, thank you so much for this post…saving as a tiff makes a huge difference!

By: Adrian Robertson

Adrian Robertson — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 11:51:45 +0000

Really good page, and interesting reply threads. Thanks for taking the time to post this, its been annoying me for ages.

By: Fastuka

Fastuka — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:08:57 +0000

Fantastic article Bob!
I was having the same issue for the past two days and I, being relatively new to this, went crazy trying to figure out what was wrong. My boss is a non designer and just kept telling me “Fix it!” Your article definitely solved the problem.

The issue I ran into is the version of Acrobat people are using. Changing the files to TIFF eliminated the black line in Acrobat 9.3.2 but did not work for 9.3.1 and lower. Those people have to manually change their settings and my boss (of course) has a reeaaally old version that didn’t even have those options available, so he’s still not happy! Either way, you helped me tremendously!

Thank you so much.

By: Bret Perry

Bret Perry — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 17:35:20 +0000

PreepressJo,

Not sure how your sherpa was made, but on our printer (Docucolor) there are always more issues with PMS spot colors than with CMYK when using any effects/transparency.

For us, choosing “Simulate Overprint” in the Output options of the Print dialog eliminates most of them, for rare, complex occasions when it doesn’t we resort to composing all effects (even type if necessary) in Photoshop with a PMS channel (yuk).

These issues only occur when printing to a composite (cmyk or rgb) printer, on press, you will have REAL spot colors & overprint so no need to simulate.

By: Cécile

Cécile — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 10:45:32 +0000

Thank you all for leaving your ‘problems’ (and most of all the solutions !) in this discussion. It was really helpful to me!

The horrid white lines have kept me awake for hours, waiting for my print work to return from the print shop… and usually the work was fine indeed. But this certainly will make me sleep better!

Cheers.

By: PrepressJo

PrepressJo — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 19:15:13 +0000

While using CS2
I had a slight problem with a halo when sending a 4 colour process with a masthead in a Special.
As typical with magazine covers, the subjects head (in Photoshop) popped over the 5th Colour masthead(Indesign) and where we had successfully made the hair edge to fade to transparent, there was still a white halo on the final sherpa proof where it never blended into the 5 th colour correctly.
On the contrary, when we ran the whole cover as CMYK only, the transparency affect worked perfectly.
Not yet seen final press result. PDF looked fine visually.
Any suggestions as to why this would happen?

By: John Maclay

John Maclay — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:21:25 +0000

I’ve seen black outlines from PSD files and white from Tifs. I started using Tifs after I figured out the PSD relationship. However, I’ve been able to use the Photoshop stroke tool to maske some of the white border. The transparency must be turned way down though.