InDesign & Transparency

[doover]

We're having trouble with a PSD placed in InDesign CS2 over a gradient made in Illustrator. The background of the PSD is transparent.. When printed banding appears in the gradient and seems to correspond to the outer image box of the PSD (Printing the gradient alone is fine). It appears to varying degree sent to either Canon ORIS and Kodak Approval.

A while back we had a similar situation though the bottom image was a TIFF with very fine vertical lines; they appeared to break and shift at the image box edge.

Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[Buko]

Re: InDesign & Transparency

Try making the gradient in Photoshop. I've always had better luck with this. If you can make the gradient with the PSD image (in the same file) that would be best.

 

[doover]

Re: InDesign & Transparency

We prepared that as a back-up (because, as you say, it works) but the print production folks here want a smaller, more manageable file to put into multiple mechanicals. On some level I just want to know why it doesn't work.

Thanks!

 

[pcmodem]

Re: InDesign & Transparency

It has to do with the area being in the bounding box of the transparent image flattening into an image and your RIP can't compensate for gradients like it normally does. You could try Exporting a Layered PDF file from InDesign and running that through your RIP. Then the RIP should control how the gradient looks and you should be fine.

Brian Cupp