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Drop Shadow Effect Not Working Flexi 10

David40

New Member
Has anyone else encountered the Drop Shadow effect not working? I tried to apply a drop shadow to a line of text and after selecting the shadow color and hitting Apply nothing happens. I can see the outline of the shadow but the color does not appear.
Any Ideas?
Thanks
 

David40

New Member
Thanks for the reply.
I didn't know that would have an effect on that I'll have to play with it. In the meantime I think I may have solved my issue. In the Drop Shadow Advance button the resolution was set to 75 dpi, I changed it to 300 dpi and my shadow appeared. In the same dialog the Opacity was set to 50% so to darken increased the percentage. Now the big question is how the Job Manager's color settings will interpret these adjustments and how it will actually look when printed.
 

thewvsignguy

New Member
Sorry, I did not know you were talking about the transparent shadow. DPI and opacity will have a lot to do with that, I normally make the image with the drop shadow much bigger then apply the drop shadow. The scale it back down to the original size, you get a better effect and control of the shadow.

To make sure it prints correctly you will need to flatten the entire image, or make sure your dithering types are the same. You're gonna have to experiment with that a bit depending on your printer and profile.
 

os101king

New Member
Here's one connected to that... on duplicate items which have had shadows (transparent ones) applied using the exact same settings.... why do they never print the same? They appear on my screen all the way even through production manager the same... but I can never predict how they will print. Have you run into that?
 

David40

New Member
Not a great feature

This is definitely an area where Flexi is needing a redesign. The controls for this feature are not at all intuitive and down right confusing. Add to that the confusing manner in which colors are selected. You could very well think you are using the same colors on the shadows but are not really. You would think for the price, the drop shadow feature would work at least as well as a much less expensive programs like Corel Draw for example.
In my case I never go by the on screen colors. I work off a printed swatch table and dial in the colors on the fly. It's the only way I get accurate colors without investing in a spectrometer system.
 

Graphics2u

New Member
Here's one connected to that... on duplicate items which have had shadows (transparent ones) applied using the exact same settings.... why do they never print the same? They appear on my screen all the way even through production manager the same... but I can never predict how they will print. Have you run into that?
The transparent shadow effect in Flexi leaves alot to be desired. if you using only one shadow effect in an image you can sometimes get by ok but if you've got multiple shadows or overlapping shadows the image has to be rasterized in order to print correctly. The trouble with that is you get color shifts when you rasterize a image from vector to bitmap.

I don't understand how they can look fine on the screen and in the job properties in PM but then not print correctly.
 
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