HAIRLINE APPEARS

[Tom_J._McGrath@adobeforums.com]

Apologies if this problem has been addressed before. I've just received a printed copy of a printed brochure composed in Indesign CS by myself. On picture boxes which contain a drop shadow, a hairline is visible, about 3mm on all sides, especially noticable on darker backgrounds. Pix without shadow are perfect.
Any help from the good people here much appreciated, while I'm waiting for customer to bawl me out of it.
Thanks a million
Tom

[Bob Levine]

My firts thought is that it's a poor job of transparency flattening. How
did you supply the files to the printer?

Bob

[Richard_Sohanchyk@adobeforums.com]

Are you using CMYK or spot colors.

[Tom_J._McGrath@adobeforums.com]

Hi Robert/Richard,
Supplied PDFs and used CMYK throughout. I'm pretty new to Indesign and trying get through it myself...company is Quark hardliner.

Thanks
Tom

[Mike_Rempe@adobeforums.com]

I get those when I make PDF's for emailing proofs and sometimes get them printing to a non-postscript laser printer, but they never show up on a commercial print job. If I have a drop shadow it will place a hairline around the bounding box of the piece of .eps art or a text box.

[Richard_Sohanchyk@adobeforums.com]

Did you print to PS and distill or export directly to PDF? The printer may have placed PDFs into a QX file and I think distilled PDFs are less agro than exported when placing into QX.

[AlFerrari]

Richard,

Does "agro" mean agreeable? If so, the opposite is true. It is pdfs exported from Indy that disagree with Express.

Al

[Bob Levine]

Actually, if you're going to an XPrss workflow, then send and EPS file.

Bob

[Bjorn_Ost@adobeforums.com]

Agro=Aggressive/Aggression. Don't you play online roleplaying games? :).

[Brutus_Maximus@adobeforums.com]

Tom

The hairlines are stitching artifacts from improper transparency flattening. Who flattened the file, and what flattener settings were used? I encourage you to layer your InDesign file so all elements with transparency applied (or elements that you know will be affected by transparency) are isolated on their own layer below other elements. Use InDesign's Flattener Preview palette to help identify problem areas. Once you've layered the ID file, try exporting a PDF with live transparency, then view the file with Acrobat's transparency preview. Sometimes it shows problem areas that aren't obvious with InDesign's Flattener Preview.

Once you have all the transparency layered to minimize unwanted interactions, you need to determine whether the printer knows how to flatten the file. If not, you'll probably want to flatten it yourself using high-res flattener settings. We'll go into that later, if necessary. For now, let's just make sure the file will flatten as cleanly as possible.

[Tom_J._McGrath@adobeforums.com]

Hi all,
thanks for all your help. I exported the file direct to PDF. However, I now suspect that the problem is with the printers. I've printed again to a HP designjet printer here and guess what....perfect.
Brutus – much appreciated. Great having such knowledgeable people to consult when things go 'pear shaped'

Tom

[Bob Levine]

> I exported the file direct to PDF.

Using what settings?

Bob

[Jeffrey_Smith@adobeforums.com]

The problem could be the printer's RIPs inability to handle transparency or a trapping (or lack of trapping) issue caused by the RIP stumbling on transparency.

[Richard_Sohanchyk@adobeforums.com]

My mistake. I type w/o thinking. I was thinking of aggro as short for aggravation. Must be getting early dyslexia.

See:

Definitions of aggro on the Web:

* 1. aggravated; deeply annoyed. 2.aggressive; in the mood for trouble-making: eg, Jim's a beaut bloke sober, but he gets aggro whenever he drinks too much.
[url]www.artistwd.com/joyzine/australia/strine/a-3.php[/url]

* (informal British usage) aggravation or aggression; "I skipped it because it was too much aggro"
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

[Peter_Truskier@adobeforums.com]

hairline is visible, about 3mm on all sides




I'm guessing that you don't really mean 3 mm if it's a hairline. If it is truly a hairline, then you are almost certainly correct, Tom, that it is the printer's problem, even if you did the transparency flattening. My guess would be that they are using some sort of dual-resolution system (like Creo Brisque, or RamPage in dual-res mode), and have it set to anti-alias or interpolate CT-to-CT edges.

While these stitching artifacts may appear in Acrobat (depending on display preferences), they should not appear on final output, assuming that the output system is properly set up to handle the results of transparency flattening.

[Tom_J._McGrath@adobeforums.com]

Sorry guys - should have been more precise.
Bob, I used 'press quality'
Peter, it is a hairline...about 3mm away from the edge of pics and you're right, they are using Creo Brisque.
Also, as Brutus pointed out, I need to get my transparency elements on a layer of its own. I had a problem with text earlier in the year which Bob kindly straightened out for me.
Again, thanks to all
Tom

[Bob Levine]

Change the Acrobat compatibility of the PDF to Acrobat 5 when exporting.
CS used 4.0 by default. CS2 uses 5.0 by default.

Bob

[Jeffrey_Smith@adobeforums.com]

Change the Acrobat compatibility of the PDF to Acrobat 5 when exporting




Live transparency causes more issues on the Brisque than flattened.

[Bob Levine]

> Live transparency causes more issues on the Brisque than flattened.

That's unfortunate, but I'd be interested in hearing from others on the
pre-press/printing end of things on that.

Bob

[Dov Isaacs]

According to Brisque users who I've talked to at Creo User Association (now Kodak Graphic User Association), problems with transparency are pretty much a thing of the past, assuming that you keep your Brisque updated with the latest software versions over the last two years from Creo (now Kodak). Unfortunately, too many printers refuse to buy into software maintenance agreements that provide the necessary RIP and workflow system updates on a regular basis.

- Dov