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A
Anonymous
June 2, 2008
Question

shaded box shows up when printing using drop shadow effects on text

  • June 2, 2008
  • 3 replies
  • 38690 views
When we use drop shadows effects on text a background shows up on the printed copy.
We use Mac OS X (Tiger and Leopard), Indesign CS3.
Suppose you have a photo as a background and you want a drop shadow on the text that is on top of the photo, where the text box is there will be a screened color on top of the photo. This doesn't show on screen. It's like the drop shadow goes all over the place.

We print on a Xerox Docu5000 using Spire CPX-50, a digital press.

What can do that? I don't think it's the resolution of the raster effects, I'm pretty sure
I checked that.

Thank you.

Louis
    This topic has been closed for replies.

    3 replies

    A
    Anonymous
    March 22, 2013

    I've had this probelm while pritning to my large format printer (HP L25500) and when it screws it up it's an expensive mistake. I've found that rather than exporting or printing to a pdf if you save it as a JPEG out of InDesign it will flatten everything and keep the weird box from showing up.

    Downsides:

    1) You get a JPEG for every page in your document which is fine for large format pritning but could be more trouble than its worth if you're doing a many paged file.

    2) If you're using bleed it won't come over in the JPEG. To fix that set your page to be slightly larger and manually add crop marks.

    Note:

    I tried saving it as a JPEG out of Acrobat Pro once I made the pdf (to keep my crops and bleeds), but the color went all kinds of crazy. This is why I say to export it as a JPEG directly out of InDesign

    I'm using CS5.5 running on a PC with Windows 7. I don't have this problem while pritning to any of the other output devices in the building (Canon 8500, Canon 6000, Konica 1050, or my RipIt Speed Setter).

    A
    Anonymous
    June 2, 2008
    I just realized that this happens with PMS colors, and not CMYK.
    BobLevine
    Community Expert
    BobLevineCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    June 2, 2008
    http://indesignsecrets.com/eliminating-ydb-yucky-discolored-box-syndrome.php

    Bob
      K
      Kev.jones30
      Participant
      March 31, 2010

      I found that post doesn't help. I use CS4 and export my work as PDFs. I don't have to see it printed -- the file shows all text with drop shadows has some weird crap in the background whether I export using 1.3 (Flattener leaves a white line around the text) or 1.4 (black box.) This is really frustrating and a bug that Adobe should've fixed years ago since it has existed for so long.

      Shame on  Adobe. This is just plain shameful.

      A
      Anonymous
      April 15, 2010

      I'm seeing my discolored boxes behind type, tiffs and ai files. I'm not sure what else to try to fix this issue. I've gone through this thread and others, looked at the YDB discussion on InDesignSecrets. Any thoughts? (Using CS3 & Acrobat 8 on MacOS 10.4.11.)

      The artist applied a drop shadow (75% black, multiplied) to items stacked on top of a 30% tint of process color (C48/M54/Y82/K3).

      So far, to no success, I've:

      • changed the drop shadow color to black plus a little, then a lot, of the background color and of individual plates.

      • changed the background color to a solid instead of a tint.

      • changed the items with the drop shadow to 99% opacity.

      • eliminated ICC profiles and used generic CMYK profiles.

      • created a separate InD layer for the background versus the drop shadowed items.

      • changed the transparency blend space to RGB instead of CMYK

      What's "worked"?

      • changed the background color to one using only two inks instead of four. Worked, but not the desired color.

      • used Claudia's YDB method of creating a transparency flattener mode that completely rasterizes the ad when creating the PDF from InD. I set the line art and text to 1200 ppi and gradient and mesh to 200 ppi. Worked, but on some of our products we're at 150 line screen printing, so 300 ppi would be more appropriate.

      Aside from rasterizing through Photoshop at huge file sizes, are there any other suggestions? If it were just one file, we'd send it to press and go have a cup of coffee while we wait - but there are a lot customers who use drop shadows (on everything ) and I'd like to be able to give them what they design.

      Thanks for any and all help!


      I've struggled with the same problem for a couple of years, and being self-taught assumed it was just my own ignorance that caused the problem.  HOWEVER--- I have found a consistently useful way to deal

      with the problem:  Whenever I use a drop shadow effect over a colored background of any kind, I simply apply a frame around the entire work when I'm finished.  I leave the inside blank and can set the stroke to as little as .125 pt and this will still work.  After creating the frame, I apply a drop shadow effect to it, set at the least possible size and using white as the shadow color.  I have it offset on only one edge, again as little as possible.   I then use the "hard light" option to complete the effect.  The result is a barely visible frame and "light shadow" inside one edge that is almost unoticeable.  All the other drop shadows are then printed without the dreaded boundary box color shift that is so objectionable.

      This is certainly not an ideal fix, but it does work quite well.

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