Inspiring

Question

Unwanted gaps between colors when using tints in a table

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
April 6, 2021
5 replies
861 views

Hi,

I apologize for my english in advance.

I made a table with cells filled with different shades of grey, starting with black, tint: 90% and ending with black, tint: 10%.

I don't want the cells to have strokes between them (the diferent shades of grey should "touch" each other directly, without any borders between them).

So I turned off all the strokes between the cells, but I noticed some kind of tiny white lines / gaps (or how should I call them) between the cells. I checked all the cell options, but I can't find the culprit.

Just as a test, I replaced the shades of grey with different colors (red, green, blue, yellow etc.) and it looks fine. The colors touch each other without unwanted "gaps" between them.

The problem not only appears in Indesign, but also in exported PDFs and even printed on paper, though it's not so visible on paper. But it is there, I can see it if I look carefully.

Thanks.

How to

This topic has been closed for replies.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

Jumping in: I created a similar table in my ID and am not experiencing the same issues.

When you said you selected "None" for the strokes between cells, are you talking about the Colour assigned to them?

Did you also specify a Stroke weight of "0"? This is actually the critical setting; It's actually not necessary to spec a colour of "None" for the stroke, as long as the weight is "0"

Anyway: Can you upload an .innd file with your table on it for review?

pixxxelschubser

Community Expert

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi sd5e8a,

I think it's the same issue we sometimes see with aligning objects that are stacked on each other and are rendered a bit off for screen representation with various zoom values depending on screen resolution and viewing sizes with PDF viewers of any kind. No issue for high quality offset printing. No issue for digital printing with high res output.

To avoid this we would need a table without any fills in the cells.

Stacked behind the table should be either an image showing the diverse fills or, if we are lucky, separate graphic frames with the different shades of gray. An awfull hack, yes, I know…

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Diane Burns

Inspiring

I created a similar setup and I exported as Interactive PDF with default settings which at 96 ppi compression. I saw the problem, though, honestly, I wouldn't have necessarily noticed it if I wasn't looking for it. When I changed the compression to 300 ppi, it seem to help resolve it. And bear in mind, most viewers will not be zooming in beyond 100%, right? What compression are you using for the PDF?

S

sd5e8aAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks for your reply, Diane Burns. I'm not an expert, but these artifacts should not be there and I don't think that improvizing with the ppi settings is the right solution (or hoping that the readers will not zoom 100%). I don't find that approach very professional. It's like trying to obscure imperfections in "post-production" (sort to speak). I believe that things should be done as good as possible in the source document (at the "production stage"), so it can be exported digitaly and then zoomed at will or printed without worrying that something will pop up. After all, this is just a table, not something very ambitious, so why this cannot work well is beyond me.

JonathanArias

Legend

did you make a table style with no columns and row strokes? screenshots help

S

sd5e8aAuthor

Inspiring

JonathanArias, thank you for your reply.

Here's a screenshot, I just added some red arrows manually so you can notice the phenomenon more easily. The darker the shade - the more obvious is the problem.

You can also zoom in the picture (it doesn't matter that the text will get pixelated, it will help you to notice those "lines" or "gaps" more easily).

This is an ordinary printscreen (just cropped). If I export the page as a jpg in 600 or 1200 dpi, the problem seems to be gone or maybe it's just not so obvious anymore, I don't know. In PDF it is quite obvious.

On paper it is hard to notice it, but I think that it is still there (like tiny tiny lines between the cells) or maybe it's just my imagination.

Thanks.

JonathanArias

Legend

Thanks. You did not answer my question. What are your table styles?

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded