Graphic Designers. Indesign (solved) issue. uggh.

**blackohio** · 10-19-2011, 02:08 PM

So Im doing a brochure for Air Lift Suspension. Been ripping pdf's for them to proof. Suddenly last night one of the 24 page pdf's the colors go all mute. I've seen this happen before where subset text was outside a cropped text box. Preflight/scan document no issues. Onto something else.

Here you can see an example of what i'm talking about. Left is the resolved issue mock, right is with the issue apparent

Their previous catalog files contained indesign drop shadows, transparencies, feathers and outer/inner glows. These seem to have a negative effect on ripping pdf's by muting the colors on the output side. I had to completely rebuild the document piece by piece ripping a new pdf each time I added some component art from the existing file. Doing this allowed me to see how the output fared as i returned each component to the new file until I could eliminate exactly what was causing the issue.

I had even gone as far as converting any unused colors in the swatches/palette to spot colors, going into the separations turning the cmyk colors off so just the spot colors remained. Then making sure that nothing in the file was using the spot color and changing it to the cmyk color. That didnt seem to effect it at all.

It turns out that any of the effects added in indesign would mute the color while ripping to pdf. There werent any overprint/non-printing attributes in the attributes panel either. Once I eliminated all the effects and re-drew the shapes/art and pasted into a new document with all the base photos/copy the issue seems to have gone away.

Typically I have never used any effects in indesign natively simply because of issues. Have you guys experienced this anywhere in the past(I noticed there were alot of indesign native effects being used).

It's a new one for me that literally had me working the last 12 hours to fix.

**dump** · 10-19-2011, 03:32 PM

Man, that doesn't sound like fun. Never used effects in Indesign. In fact, all the stuff I've done in Indesign has been one color

**hieronymusbosch** · 10-19-2011, 03:39 PM

Never had that problem. Are you creating a Postscript file and running through Distiller or just exporting from Indd?

**IH8Rice** · 10-19-2011, 03:52 PM

try it now?

**blackohio** · 10-19-2011, 04:35 PM

Originally Posted by hieronymusbosch

Never had that problem. Are you creating a Postscript file and running through Distiller or just exporting from Indd?

I was going directly through ind, adobe pdf presets panel. Been doing it that way for quite some time without any issues. Ive also never used any indd effects but some of the source materials had them from previous catalogs so I was trying to create a balance old-to-new. Eliminating them turns out to be the best solution. I can go back in, add a indd drop shadow, export and boom the muting returns.

**hieronymusbosch** · 10-19-2011, 05:11 PM

I just used INDD effects (inset shadows and drop shadows) across an entire campaign for a college Hockey team with no problems on a Mac with INDD CS 5.5 (v7.5). Is that a rich black your using for that background and maybe causing weirdness?

**eaterofdog** · 10-19-2011, 06:13 PM

Make sure that your transparency blend space is set to the final color space the PDF will be used for.

And... try it now.

**blackohio** · 10-19-2011, 06:38 PM

Wasn't that either (Trans blend space is the same final destination. I literally spent from midnight until 4am last night and 7am until noon sorting it, and it doesn't make much sense. It's possible it's a rich black issue since the background is a dense concrete tone on all the pages. How does Indd handle the pre-set effects, does it have to rasterize shapes with effect to apply in the final output?

I had this happen once before with overset text (I think I mentioned subset previously for some reason) once I fixed the overset text muting resolved itself.

**golgiaparatus** · 10-20-2011, 07:53 AM

I've seen this before, where transparencies and drop shadows created in ID caused pages to mute a little bit. Overset text was the issue? That doesn't make sense to me. I've seen it happen from using a drop shadow, and as soon as the drop shadow is cleared out the densities go back to normal.

**local717** · 10-20-2011, 08:15 AM

What version are you using? I've found that as a Suite gets older, and new versions (CS5.5) come out the older stuff gets, buggy. Already having some issues with CS4...

**blackohio** · 10-20-2011, 09:09 AM

Golg, Yup overset text on a small 2 page pdf caused this at work, Don't know why but once I resolved that a created the pdf it was fine.

Local, it's CS5 so unless apple designed that version I would think it would go bonkers yet.