Comments on: Spot Colors and Transparency Flattening in InDesign CS3

By: Ken

Ken — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 18:06:26 +0000

If you have rampage you can just output to PDF 7 and use There “PDF Rip Trap profile” and its not a problem at all.

By: Ken

Ken — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 18:02:53 +0000

If you set your Transparecy Flattener Preset to custom Create a Preset to 100% vector line art 1200 gradient over 300 Check Convert All text AND Strokes also.
Then export out of indesign as a PDF
Choose Acrobat 4 or 1.3 then go to advanced change to your new preset also check Ignore spead overrides. That should get you what you need.

By: Linda Nordlund

Linda Nordlund — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 00:39:59 +0000

I have been working on this issue all week. What I discovered was if I make a mixed ink color of black and the spot color (100%k, 1%spot) I get the effect I’m looking for. If my text has a spead I check the isolate blending box on the transparency palette and my shadow mode is normal. for shadows with out the spread I leave the isolate unchecked. I tried this twice with success.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:09:44 +0000

You should never flatten your artwork, unless you’re running on an older machine or have a lack of space on your hd.

By: No one

No one — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:23:00 +0000

David,
Anytime we do anything with spot colors like a gradient between PMS 286 and 285, for example, it has to be done in photoshop in 2 spot color channels. Our printer’s RIP is a 10 year old version of Kodak’s printergy.

I was asking if this would change that. After talking to our printer, it won’t. We also can ONLY use this printer.

I need a new job.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:10:49 +0000

No one: I’m not sure what you’re saying. Why do you have to make DCS files for all spot jobs? You could use PSD, for example. But whatever the case, DCS has been supported in InDesign (including transparency effects) for the past couple of versions.

By: No one

No one — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:31:50 +0000

So, does this mean those of us who have to make DCS files for _all_ spot jobs before placing them in InDesign are free and can actually USE some of InDesign’s features now?

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 13:05:05 +0000

Bob, while I do know that the CreoBrisque RIP has had some major upgrades in the past couple of years, I don't know about any networking issues. However, it appears that Kodak (creo scitex whatever) is trying to get its Brisque users to "upgrade" to Prinergy. And one of the best reasons do do this is that the new Prinergy system support native PDF (adobe's pdf print engine) so that flattening becomes a thing of the past. James Wamser of Sells Printing showed me some examples of output from their new system a couple of weeks ago, and it's wonderful... getting rid of flattening just solves so many problems.

By: Bob

Bob — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 00:01:40 +0000

I remember a similar problem. When opening a PS file in Freehand to edit once (and I can’t remember why we wanted to do that), we discovered that Freehand interlaced the rastered colors with hundreds of RGB masks (I suppose for the larger color space). If we selected-similar, un-grouped, and deleted the RGB layers, we could edit the postscript and re-save it and use it as good postcript. That’s a foggy recollection of something that happened long ago…but that making a drop-shadow in Adobe products that have advanced transparency, seems to be interfering with the art’s affect on the layers below it, similarly, but probably not the RGB interlacing.

Bob

By: Bob

Bob — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 23:45:25 +0000

We are also having transparency issues in InDesign CS3, with drop-shadows. We found out that backsaving as a CS2 legacy file and printing from that, eliminates the ghosted box. but who know for how long or what else gets hosed, when backsaving from CS3.

We are having another problem with CS3. We are having trouble writing or sending postscript to our CreoBrisque RIP out of CS3. CS2 worked fine. Quark works fine. But PS from CS3 stall, times-out and the connection breaks. Writing PS pointing Adobe 8.0 as the output device helps sometimes. I understand that fine-tuning the parameters in Distiller helps but haven’t resolved everything yet. Does the Brisque need an Appletalk firmware update? Seems so. We’re printing out of Intel dual-core Macs. That seems to indicate that an Appletalk upgrade to the Brisque even more important.

Thanks in advance.
Bob