Drop Shadows

[ackerman139]

Hey Guys, been printing some drop shadows on logos, and looks killer on the computer, and when imported into versaworks and printed on high quality it prints a "transparent" box around the area with the drop shadow. It just lightens every color noticeably inside that box. Any ideas on how to fix this asap? Thanks!

 

[jasonx]

Re save as a flattened tiff or flatten transparencies. I'm assuming your saving PDFs.

 

[ackerman139]

yes pdfs. We print all vector therefore we wont resave it as a tiff.. is it something that has to do with spot colors?

 

[jasonx]

It's to do I think with PDF's and transparencies. That way its layered.

Try this select everything in your artwork and go to Object -> Flatten Transparency and re save your PDF.

I think that fixes it.

 

[ackerman139]

it fixes it sometimes, but screws up the contour cutlines which is a spot color always. Also sometimes it messes with some of the artwork. I think in the larger sized ones.

 

[jasonx]

Sorry should of told you not to select any cut lines because it expands them.

when this happens I usually take the artwork to photoshop flatten it and re save it as a pdf. Place it in illustrator add the cut lines again and re save it out.

 

[Mosh]

A flat tiff, we get this problem all the time on customer art.

 

[GypsyGraphics]

Just ran into this same issue, appearing in PDF file. The layout was in InDesign, the problem was a placed PSD image, with a transparent background, that inadvertently hadn't been converted to CMYK. Didn't catch it in the preflight (note to self, don't trust 3am preflights).

The discoloration in the underlying color was the transparent portion of the image box.

The problem, mixing color modes. The fix, easy... don't do that.

 

[luggnut]

i have this problem sometimes when using raster effects (drop shadows are raster in illy) combined with vectors. the RIPs rendering intent for raster is perceptual and for vectors it's no correction or relative colormetric.

i set both the intents in the rip to relative colormetric and it fixes it.

if that don't fix it i use the make it a jpg or tiff method...

 

[ericmitchell29]

Rasterize it and save as pdf. works for me everytime.

 

[jfiscus]

If you are working in Illustrator it should be giving you a warning that spot colors and transparencies (drop shadows) do NOT mix.

Unfortunately, the only fix for this combination is to rasterize the image.

Once you have the image rasterized, place it back into Illustrator and place the ContourCut lines back into position. You should not notice much of a difference in actual print quality if you do this correctly, though the file may be a larger size and take longer to process.

 

[luggnut]

is it something that has to do with spot colors?

i missed that part. you will get that warning about mixing spot and transparencies producing unexpected results.

 

[ProColorGraphics]

It does have to do with the drop shadow or any blended effects over a spot color. Unless you want to get a different RIP, like Onyx, who says they eliminate this problem, you have to flatten the file and place your cut lines on top. It has done this for me with every type of file.

 

[ackerman139]

fiscus, luggnut, and pro. I think you guys are dead on. Now I know what my problems are. Thanks a tonnnnn! Let you know if for some strange reason nothing works.