Drop shadows ghosting in Quark

[prep]

Hello,

A client has me cutting up images and wants to collage them. Wanted a drop shadow so I clipped the image to a layer and added the shadow. Saved as tiff with transparency. Placed the images in Quark and made the collage. BUT the drop shadow over dark areas looks like it is making the background lighter. I have set the drop shadow to be only 100K and Multiply and tried a rich black set to multiply. Opacity is 100% in the drop shadow dialog in photoshop. Now I could not get this to work in Quark. I placed the images the same way in a InDesign document and the shadows behaved as I would expect them to darkening the underlying image. Because this Client still uses Quark, I ended up making my collage in photoshop and placing it into a quark file which resulted in it printing correct.

I am using Quark Version 7.5 and Mac OS 10.4.11, G5 single processor, Indesign CS3 for my test, and Photoshop CS4.

Question: is Quark not able to properly render transparency from photoshop tiffs?

 

[michaelejahn]

Hello,

A client has me cutting up images and wants to collage them. Wanted a drop shadow so I clipped the image to a layer and added the shadow. Saved as tiff with transparency. Placed the images in Quark and made the collage. BUT the drop shadow over dark areas looks like it is making the background lighter. I have set the drop shadow to be only 100K and Multiply and tried a rich black set to multiply. Opacity is 100% in the drop shadow dialog in photoshop. Now I could not get this to work in Quark. I placed the images the same way in a InDesign document and the shadows behaved as I would expect them to darkening the underlying image. Because this Client still uses Quark, I ended up making my collage in photoshop and placing it into a quark file which resulted in it printing correct.

I am using Quark Version 7.5 and Mac OS 10.4.11, G5 single processor, Indesign CS3 for my test, and Photoshop CS4.

Question: is Quark not able to properly render transparency from photoshop tiffs?

If I recall, Quark XPress requires a small Quark Extention to deal with this properly - years back, when I worked for AGFA, we provided our customers with an extention named CTIFF - I think Creo (Now Kodak) did that as well.

Now, having said that, perhaps it is not that Quark is not dealing with this properly and (again, being polite here) - perhaps it is the approach you are using to convert that Quark XPress document to "what you are then imaging"...

Since you do not share the method, I really can't help - are you pritning with separations on to a PostScript file to make plates ? Are you exporting to PDF, and if so, which settings ?

- another 'hint' - uncheck "inherit items opacity" in the drop shadow dialog box. Also, while there, verify you have checked multiply (its is set to multiply by default, but, well, you know...). Also, if dealing with text - assuming you don't want this box to cause reflows check "none" under runaround.

Hope this helps, and tell the client that since Quark really does not support the Adobe transparency model properly, perhaps it is time to consider a switch to InDesign like the rest of the free world.