InDesign -- drop shadows affecting images

I proceeded to take the next step and contact Adobe's support. They requested I screen share with one of their techs and so I did. However, their tech was unable to fix the issue, he did though recommend that I report the bug and hopefully get Adobe's attention so that they could release a patch or software update of some sort.

In addition to Anne Marie’s post, this is not a bug and is expected behavior when there is any transparent object on a spread, and you have chosen CMYK as the Transparency Blend Space. I’m surprised a real Adobe tech person would not be familiar with such a basic behavior, so you might want to confirm that you were really sharing your screen with Adobe support.

This does not happen to any other colors that I am aware of, only the blues.

The CMYK blend space is affecting out-of-gamut RGB or Lab colors—colors that can‘t be printed from the CMYK device profile assigned to your document— and not just blues.

For example here I have 4 colors, two—the green and blue— are out-of-gamut to my doc‘s assigned CMYK profile. The other two are RGB, but in the assigned CMYK profile’s color gamut:

If I turn on Overprint Preview, the green and blue are displayed in the CMYK gamut, while the other two keep their appearance because they are already in gamut:

Or if I add a transparent object to the spread with the blend space as CMYK:

Applying a drop shadow to an object, because the shadow is a transparency effect, makes InDesign change the display to account for the transparency in the spread. It's trying to show the most accurate colors. If you're printing to a CMYK space, like a commercial press, not every color can be replicated, so InDesign is showing you the closest match, like a CMYK preview.

If you're printing to something digital (a PDF that will be downloaded, for example), exporting to JPEG, or to a color printer in-house, go to Edit > Transparency Blend Space  and choose RGB Transparency. The color shift should go away, and your colors should appear more vibrant and saturated on screen, just as they will when printed.

OR if you choose View > Overprint Preview, the effect of the transparency on your display should reduce considerably.

AM

Hi Robert.

I don't know if this will work or not, but when I've had problems dealing with applying effects within InDesign or Illustrator, I've sometimes had good luck with applying an opaque Paper/White background (for InDesign and Illustrator, respectively) behind the image.

Sometimes applying the [Paper] fill to the frame, then placing the image inside the frame will work. Or it may entail two frames; one containing your image, and a duplicate copied and pasted behind with a fill of [Paper] and your drop shadow effect applied.

It's worth a shot. It doesn't take much to experiment. And perhaps this can get you past your problem.

Good luck,

Randy

If it’s a bug, do as Barb says. If you want us to look at it, we need to see screen before and after screen shots of your images, including your Effects panel.

This is a user forum and most of us do not work for Adobe.

Hi Robert:

I'm sorry about the difficulities you are facing. You might try logging into the InDesign uservoice site with a different browser.

Adobe InDesign Feedback

~Barb