Text lost on image when sending a PDF to print or flattening transparency.

Question

I have text at 75% opacity overlayed on an image. The text is outlined. When I export this to PDF, the text is still visible (as shown in the first image 'example-1.png'). But when it is printed, or when I go through the Flatten Transparency dialogue box, it ends up looking like the second image ('example-2'.png), where text above coloured parts of the image are entirely lost. Is there a solution?

Bobby Henderson · Answer

What kind of printer are you using to print the image? Does it have an Adobe PDF print engine? Printers or RIP applications that lack native Adobe PDF capability will have problems trying to print graphics that have transparency effects.

Have you tried printing the PDF from Adobe Acrobat? Sometimes Acrobat can do a decent job translating PDF content to printers that can't handle PDF content natively.

The only other solution I can think of is rasterizing the graphic and then printing the resulting image. That can be done within Adobe Illustrator. Or the graphic can be pasted into Photoshop and rasterized there.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded