InDesign Alpha Fill

[coremac]

A set of application files submitted by a customer included an Illustrator graphic imported into InDesign. Somehow, the InDesign graphic box that the Illustrator file was imported into adds a 45% Alpha Fill to the graphic. I have not been able to find an InDesign setting to add an Alpha Fill to a graphic. The only way I found to deal with the Alpha Fill was to delete the graphic box created by the customer and re-import the Illustrator file. If anyone has an explanation of where the Alpha Fill came from, I would like to share it with the customer.
Screen Shot 2013-01-14 at 9.46.19 AM.jpg

[Al Ferrari]

Your Screen Shot clearly shows that an alpha field is activated, set to 45%, and set to multiply. Where is the mystery?
Al

edit: Why not accept that the alpha field came in with the Illustrator graphic?

[rich apollo]

Alpha refers to transparency/opacity. The element is set to multiply with a 45% opacity. It looks like the client was either unaware of how to set a dieline to overprint, or was unaware of how to turn overprint preview on.

[michaelejahn]

I 'think" this may have happened when they set the die line object up - it SHOULD have been set to OVERPRINT at the object level, and THEN set a transparency level - that way, it will not trap or effect any other layers - AND - they should save as PDF/X-4 ( probably set it to PDF/X-1a, and they probably got that warning about mixing transparency settings and spot colors, yada yada... )

[Lukas Engqvist]

As Michael says use overprint, nothing else. Using different transparency blend modes and spot colours is just asking for trouble.