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dominikj65234843
Participating Frequently
January 13, 2018
Question

Indesign – transparency, text appears pixelated and fuzzy

  • January 13, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 4259 views

Hi,

I am using the latest Indesign cc 2018. I am creating layout for print. I've already changed the flatten transparency settings to not get the white box. However, when I import RGB tif file with transparency, the text appears pixelated. The transparency blend is set to the CMYK, altough when I change it to RGB the text appears normal. Could somebody explain the difference in the transparency blend mode? The output file will be CMYK PDF.

Thanks

1 reply

rob day
Community Expert
rob dayCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 13, 2018

I've already changed the flatten transparency settings to not get the white box.

When there's any transparent object on a page, all color on the page is previewed in the chosen Transparency Blend Space—the actual color doesn't change, it's just the preview that's changing. If you choose RGB, out-of-gamut RGB color will preview unchanged—unless you turn on Overprint Preview, which always forces the preview of process color into the document's CMYK space whether there's transparency or not.

InDesign allows a mix of color spaces on a page, there's no document color space the way there is in Photoshop and Illustrator. On export you can choose to leave all color unchanged and transparency live (i.e. PDF/X-4), or you can flatten transparency and convert into a single destination color space (PDF/X-1a). If you flatten on export the chosen transparency blend space is used.

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    dominikj65234843Author
    Participating Frequently
    January 13, 2018

    Thank you very much for the great explanation! Actually i still don't get why transparency ruins the text preview, (I am not applying the transparency to the text), as soon as I remove the transparent image, the text is back to normal. The text is placed away from the transparent image. I am having the same issue: Transparency effects make all text JAGGED - Adobe Indesign Windows

    My PC specs:

    CPU: i5 8400

    GPU: Intel UHD 630

    16GB DDR4 RAM

    Windows 10 home 64bit.

    The first one is the pixelated version when transparent image is presented, the second one is normal.

    Bez názvu 1 - PostIMG

    When I change the transparency blend space to RGB, it seems to get rid of that issue.

    rob day
    Community Expert
    rob dayCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    January 13, 2018

    I don't see any difference with white on black text on OSX. Is there a problem in an exported PDF if you use the PDF/X-4 preset?

    Any transparent object on the spread will affect the preview of the entire spread and not just the transparent object.

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