Losing transparency from a .ai file

Question

Hi,

I'm writing a climbing guidebook where the climbs are described by drawings, where the routes are drawn inn with lines on those drawings. Next to those there's some text with info and grades etc...

I made the drawings in Illustrator and created different layers for the drawing, the route and the text.

I then place the Illustrator file directly into Indesign and draw over the lines and text - this because I sometimes have to change the size of the immage, and otherwise the route line thickness and font sizes would differ from page to page. I then end with "shutting off" some layers in the illustrator file (from indesign).

The problem I'm runnin into now is that the transparency of the .ai files is lost. My page number boxes get blocked by what should be a transparrent part of the layers in illustrator.

Is there a workaround here or am I opening a can of worms that my limited experience will not be able to work with?

Attached a picture of the guidebook with the little page number box "missing" on the right page, and a screenshot from illustrator showing the drawing with the transparency grid on.

Thanks a lot.

tonks_the_auror · Accepted Answer

This might be too simple, but are you checking "Transparent Background" in your import options when you place the Illustrator file into InDesign?

Abhishek Rao · Answer

Hi @Nelson25545283cvpr,

Thanks for sharing the screenshots and explaining your setup so clearly. Could you try saving the Illustrator artwork as a PDF-compatible file with transparency preserved, or exporting it as a PDF/X-4 which fully supports live transparency. Placing a PDF instead of a native .ai file can sometimes avoid the white bounding box issue you're seeing over the page numbers.

Another thing you can try is checking your InDesign display performance and transparency blend space settings to make sure the transparency is being rendered correctly.

Could you confirm which Illustrator and InDesign versions you’re working with, and whether the issue shows up only in this file or also with other placed .ai files?

Please give this a try and let me know how it goes.

Abhishek

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