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June 2, 2008
Question

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

  • June 2, 2008
  • 3 replies
  • 38637 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

    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).

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

    Bob
    New 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.

    Known Participant
    February 4, 2013

    The page still seems active when I try..

    InDesignSecrets » Blog Archive » Eliminating YDB (Yucky Discolored Box) Syndrome


    Yes, you are correct. I had tried again after posting and the page loaded fine. The custom flattener worked perfectly too. It added a bit of time to the print process - both when it sends the doc. to the printer, then more time while the printer thinks about it, but much less time than doing some sort of PSD trick on the entire page - and much more convenient. The results are exactly what I was looking for. Thank you all.