ATTN Designers...What is this??

[Banners Signs Etc.]

It comes up from time to time in our designs...I'd like to know what it is and how to explain to our designers how to fix it.

We usually design in Illustrator, I can fix the problem by loading into and printing from photoshop, unfortunately we've already printed the whole order before seeing this one...color will probably be off.

How do we avoid this in the future, and what is it?

 

[J Hill Designs]

tranparency over spot color

 

[Stephenedwardgraphic]

Thats an issue with Transparency. Transparency is needed in order to use the drop shadow. Where the drop shadow touches creates something called an atomic region, and that atomic region is interacting differently with the color (probably a spot color) where the element is vs where it is not. To fix you can try several things.

1. Flatten the transparency
2. Save out a new PDF from your layout flattening the transparency (choose something like PDFX1a (doesn't allow transparency and flattens the file)
3. Save out a PDF file and leave transparency un flattened, but in your RIP make sure you honor overprints -- do not strip them out.

Hope this helps...

 

[Stephenedwardgraphic]

Also make sure to have your transparency flattener settings set correctly in Illustrator

Effect/Document Raster Effect menu in Illustrator --set to high res (300 dpi)

 

[x2chris7x]

Yep, transparency in illustrator... Most likely from applying effects within illustrator (Drop Shadow, Outer Glow, etc.)

I came across a fix for this a while back... I was experimenting with profiles after just having some repairs made to our printer. I noticed that in Wasatch there is an option for ICC input profiles. The is an option for CMYK Vector and Raster and there is also an option for RGB Vector and Raster.

Ours was setup by Mutoh for CMYK Vector: Relative Colormetric / Raster: Perceptual. From what I've found it is basically how the rip interprets CMYK vector files vs. CMYK rasters files. By changing the CMYK Vector to PERCEPTUAL. It corrected the problem.

From test prints that I've made it looks like when a file, that contains transparency, is embedded within a vector file... The rip interprets the vector image separately from the raster image. I would bet that if you check your ICC input profiles within your rip software you would see that your CMYK Vector and Raster setting are different. Setting them to the same, Perceptual should fix the problem...

I know people usually don't wanna get into to changing up profiles, but if you do decide to try this to fix your problem please let me know how it worked for you. I have posted this fix before, but to my knowledge no one has attempted to do it. I'm just curious to see if this works for others.

Same would go for RGB files... I'm only assuming that your printing in CMYK

 

[Banners Signs Etc.]

Thanks for the replies...we're deciphering..

 

[bttweb]

its YDB (aka Yucky Discolored Box) I didnt make it up .. you can look it up

happened to me only in print so I flattened the file to a 100% JPG before printing..

I consulted with someone and told me to set a clipping path in Photoshop instead
of it just being transparent image.. it wont have the discoloration on the transparent area.
also look up on how to set clipping path in Photoshop

let me know the results

 

[ddubia]

This is probably a cheesy fix, more of a workaround, but when I'm in a hurry I just open the .ai file in photoshop and save it as a .jpg. It prints fine.

But I am going to take a look at the rendering intents as suggested. That would be a permanent fix without needing the workaround.