: PDF from InDesign looks correct but prints bounding boxes around effects and transparencies on SOME printers When I export my newsletter from InDesign to PDF, the resulting PDF, including all

@Odierno310

I don't know if this will work for you, but I am just giving my personal experience!

I had this issue arise 2 months ago, for the first time, on a Xerox Workcentre using an Indesign template that I use every month. It was on any image that had transparency or drop shadows.
The only thing that worked was to:


Change placed file types: had to convert and re-link all of my TIFF, AI, and EPS files to PNGs
Turn off the post-script for images on the "advanced" printer settings. I would give more details on how to do this, but I'm not familiar with your printer. The wording was "Post-Script Pass Through: Disabled"


After these changes with this file in particular, everything printed as it appeared on the screen! However, using the same template the following month, the print job worked with all of the aforementioned types of files and I had to turn the post-script back on.

This is a trial and error issue for me, so perhaps one of those changes will help next time you come across this issue!

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@Hamaas979

Thanks everyone for you input. Seems that the printer I am using is not capable of correctly rendering effects and transparencies whether they are flattened or not. I've turned every effect on the driver off and the only improvement was that it was able to render effects and transparencies correctly only if the object was positioned over no colour (paper) or over another raster (image, tiff).

Unfortunately, the same anomalies I am getting on this printer is the anomalies we see at the print shop we are using to have the final product produced. (we have to use this particular shop). This is partially why I was using this above mentioned printer to QAQC the press PDF.

Since I was not able to eliminate the problem I decided to look an older Indesign file that was done by an external design company in hope of some idea. I noticed that they used tiff files for both solid and textured backgrounds. Once i switched to this technique, the files print correctly and there is no significant file size increase.

In short, the workaround that works for me is not to use vector fill below any objects that are transparent of have an effect (i.e. shadow). This is easily accomplished by placing tiff images if that particular CMYK colour in the frames.

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@Fox8063795

Printing CMYK over CMYK is extremely difficult, and when transparencies are involved even more so, and to make things another step worse, make excessive use of spot colors.

In Acrobat Pro, in the Print Production Tools, you have the Transparency flattener. This should take care of the transparencies.

In order to get the best quality, do not use JPEG compression, but switch manually to ZIP (you will see what is meant when you have the dialog in front of you).

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@Debbie163

There isn't much more to do than rasterizing your layout, and it doesn't change much the quality when printing on a small office or home printer, or even on a digital commercial printer.

Your non-postscript office printer rasterizes the layout in its own way and that's the result it renders based on your effects. I'm just guessing since you're not giving details on that printer.

The plotter has a postscript driver or a RIP, and converts your effects properly.
www.justskins.com/forums/printing-transparency-issues-81639.html

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