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

By: Bob Levine

Bob Levine — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 12:47:09 +0000

The only workarounds I know of are all listed in the post and the comments. The only thing I can tell you for sure is that I have not seen this problem is quite some time and you may well be seeing something different. You can try posting in the forums and see if anyone has any thought.

You also may want to consider upgrading. If you buy CS5.5 now you can get CS6 for free when it ships. http://bit.ly/nR8mSm

By: Yasemin

Yasemin — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 12:36:39 +0000

I have exactly the same problem with the halo’s around transparant psd images. (indesign, PS cs4)

Exporting in Acrobrat 1.4 -1.7 and/or importing transparant TIFF. images doesn’t work.

I wouldn’t if I would just have to print it, but I also need to put the file (portfolio) online and this way it looks really unprofessional.

Can somebody help me?

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.