InDesign CS6 Drop Shadow Pixelated

Report · Nov 18, 2016

Someone please help!!!

No matter if my document is large or small or the object i work with is placed or a vector shape, applying a drop shadow effect or bevel & emboss effect display a pixelated blend!!

Ive search a million forums and have seen a ton of people with the same problem and never an answer that fixes it.

I never used to have this problem with older versions of indesign so I'm hoping its a setting fix!

My problem is with the screen display, not printing. Even when i export as pdf and open it in acrobat, the drop shadows are pixelated. Ive set everything that i could to high res (including display performance) Ive tried transparency flattener but that doesn't change anything. Ive tried different blend modes and opacities. Color mode is in CMYK.

Here is a screen shot to show what i mean. Since the problem is within the effects shadows and blending, it must be a transparency quality issue. I don't know!

I know this should not look like this.

-Ryan

Report · Nov 18, 2016

Drop shadows and Bevel effects are Resolution Independent Effects (RIE). What ultimately dictates the resolution of these objects are the devices that renders or rasterizes the object. While object is in Indesign, the drop shadow or bevel effect is limited to monitor resolution. If you flattened this object, you will rasterize the effect based on the flattener setting selected and of course remove the resolution independence aspect.

Report · Mar 20, 2018

Unfortunately, it's not just with how drop shadows and other effects view on the monitor. Some people are experiencing preflight flags on drop shadows. Even after making a hi res PDF. I didn't for a long time until just recently. For some reason, the same graphic that exported drop shadows just fine once before, is now being flagged by Indesign's preflight as low res AND is being created in hi res PDFs as low res.

Report · Mar 20, 2018

Transparency without Flattening

Report · Mar 20, 2018

For some reason, the same graphic that exported drop shadows just fine once before, is now being flagged by Indesign's preflight as low res AND is being created in hi res PDFs as low res.

If you are using CC2018 make sure you are updated to the latest 13.1. There was a problem with images exporting as low res with the initial release and it has been fixed with the latest version. You might have to reset your prefs after the upgrade.

Shadow effects do get exported as an image and the resolution will depend on the size and gradation of the shadow. If you preflight in Acrobat, drop shadows can trigger a resolution rule violation because they don't have much to resolve (see #27 in my link above).

So if I preflight this PDF/X-4 with a simple circle fill with a long drop shadow, it will violate the 250ppi threshold. For print output the 175ppi is more than enough to resolve the shadow's limited number of gray levels.

On screen you have to consider the problem of the zoom level performance and resampling for the preview. If you zoom in and out the quality of the shadow is going to change, but that doesn't affect the print output quality.