Faint box or stitching lines appearing around text after exporting to PDF/X-1a and flattening for print

Question

My InDesign files are book covers for publishing and when I send the publisher the X-1a high resolution PDF, they flatten the PDF in photoshop and frequently there ends up being a very faint rule, like a box, around some of the type. There is no box actually there in the InDesign file, and it’s not even where the edge of the text box is -- what is causing this and how do I get rid of it?

switzkill · Accepted Answer

Thanks for your help. I actually saw two posts suggesting that these problems wouldn’t occur when saving asan X-4 PDF instead, and that seemed to solve the problem.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse · Answer

Do you have some sort of effect on the type, like a drop shadow or glow effect? If so, when flattened, the area around your type is rastered into an image at the resolution you have set in your Flattening presets. The “gaps” are stitching errors around these areas. The lower your flattening resolution settings, the more these stitching errors may show up. Now, whether this is a result of the exact setting in your X-1a export (i.e. the flattening may have happened before whatever the THEY are doing is hard to say. Can you share the PDF?

Also. to test: Open your PDF in Illustrator. Your flattened areas should show up as a multitude of rectangles and you will probably see clipping shapes that match the lines you are seeing around your text.

Also, render the PDF yourself in Photoshop. Open it in Photoshop and set it at a high resolution, say 600 or 1200 with NO anti-aliasing. If you don’t see any lines, the fault is with your printer.

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