No Name tags required

Driving familiar streets of Adelaide on Saturday; the names and the faces on buildings have changed – yet the roads still head in the same directions. Names are tags, that sometimes attempt to label, but are generally used to represent “things”, but they are not who we are nor indicate directions we choose in life.

At my first school reunion, name tags were mandatory even as we recognised faces, physical expressions and postures, voices and groupings. Old school nick names that once sounded edgy were now embarrasing and difficult to explain to non-old scholar partners – and the girls who chose to change their maiden names to unknown surnames have only changed in name; not dramatically in personality.

A reunion of this nature is unique life experience. Not one to be missed. It is surprising that it is rarely explored by art; and where nostalgia is thematic, it seems comical rather than cathartic.

It was difficult to tell: was Kevin Richardson, the current Headmaster of Immanuel College, joking when he said he “had checked around” on the class of 1985? I am sure the uncovered opinions of our group would have been mixed. The pride of this school, and any private school, is it facilities. These are paramount in attracting a steady stream of revenue – and they express the educational will of the teaching community. Kevin, coming from a technology background in teaching; seems to have swung Immanuel down the road of modern teaching techniques – a lesson my son’s techno-phobic school could learn.

In the tour of the school grounds, ably spruiked by Kevin with doors unlocked by the famous non-mirrored sunglassed Mr Dawes; one of the few members of administration staff we recognised with some mixed fondness; we all realised that the scale of the operation has changed. As has the method of delivery of classes from our day. Old school: Whiteboards were the mod-device in 1985. New school: 1024×768 LCD projectors. Chalk dust is as ancient as slate boards and wooden hinged desks. The number of vocational classes, and seemingly focus, out weighs the pure academic classes.

Our class of 1985 was sandwiched between the swot-heavy classes of 1983/4 and the active and engaged class of 1986. Our year was the class that experimented with the application of the Pareto principle as it came to high school education. For 80% of the class, 20% of the effort was applied to schoolwork. The other 80% of the time was spent in other activities which ultimately had a greater positive outcome on who they became.

The attendence rate directly reflected the class Pareto principle. Roughly 80% of the class turned up. For a minority, it was the first time they were drinking alcohol on school grounds in the shadow of the former boarding houses. Those who were not there were remembered in words and stories. Classic events, bustups, inadvertent animal sacrifice and pairings reanimated personalities. Many stories, left unsaid and untouched, remain in the collective experiences.

“So what have you been up to?”, when first asked, is a frightening question. Stupidly and strangely, I had not prepared a PR talk track and 15 second elevator pitch to intelligently answer this question; to achieve any formal goals of comparison. Mumbling some words; attempting not to be a bloke and focus only on the work and provide an element of family colour; yet knowing that this aspect provides the shapes that explains who you have evolved into.

Twenty years is a perfect interval to reconnect with old school acquaintances. There has been more “after school life” that outweighs the ackwardness of of the teenager that lives inside us all. Family, experiences, relationships, travel and raw maturity provides an ability to shroud the embarrassment with intruiging small talk to fill 6-7 hours.

Yes, Immanuel is the school that Lleyton Hewitt attended; the sheer number of tennis courts is probably the core reason he chose the school. Yes, this class sprouted a Miss Australia. restauranteurs, respected tradesmen, vegetable based protein manufacturers, standard grey-haired business-types, two PhDs and a bevy of dedicated mothers of largish broods. Success, if gauged only by an ability for self-support and an ability to not be a burden on others – has been kind to this class.

According to Dawkin’s, “The Selfish Gene”, the meaning of life is to re-spawn more life and perpetuate DNA. Therefore, the topic parenthood was usually an immediate question to assist in generating conversation. Many had braved three children; others speak of staying at home with their children, and working “0.8” weeks. Adelaide, in comparison to Sydney, is the perfect location for detuning from a pure career ladder of a economically fulfilling yet soul draining lifestyle.

Putting it scientifically, the desire to reproduce, partner and perpetuate DNA is a driver close to the surface of all teenagers. Another unspoken activity at reunions is the evalutation of our teenage crushes/hormones/pairings to determine if our mental wiring had chosen an appropriate potential mate. A few had made very appropriate choices of partners early. A surprising few were single.

Many of the class have started to spawn their own future students. There is a surprisingly large number of the group who have chosen to live in the Immanuel side of town, and send their children to the school. There is some business planner at the Immanuel that must model these figures with an eye to future revenue from old scholar parents. As a parent, it’s difficult enough to converse with your child’s teachers, let alone in send your children to a school you attended in your distant youth.

Another measurement of success is living up to the spark of potential first shown at school. I have always wondered if teachers can foretell the potential of the students in their class; and live in wonder of their results. Not enough teachers from our time arrived to ask this question and test the hypothesis.

Mr Volk, or should I say “Noel”, popped over to say hello. His first question is a question that will echo for some time: so are you a journalist or in IT? There was an air of inferiority on “IT”, or at least I wasn’t living up to a previously unforseen potential. Personally, I never viewed doing the school’s magazine as a journalistic job; nor as it as a path to future career success. English wasn’t a subject I felt passionately about to complete in Year 12/Matric, but it was a small moment of pride seeing people reading a 1985 Echo that contains your fingerprints. I sort of fell into the magazine job in an vain-glorious effort towards self-promotion. Everyone else on the team did the hard yards. That is why IT is the perfect home for me; standing on the shoulders of giants.

The age from 12 to 17 is difficult for all. Apart from the obvious physical changes, our worldview emerges yet it seems the fundamental nature of people is there to see. Look at a 16/17 year old, and you will see 80% of their future self. Yes, there are many experiences and more education to come – but the adult they are to become is just there. There are more than just shadows and echoes of their school self in the adults I met.

This class reunion, for me, was more than a mechanism for measuring our personal life choices against our peers – it was a good cathartic mechanism for extinguishing regret. Rather than dwelling on the past, it permits us to refind old friends and let the intervening years of disconnect fall away. These are classic pure friends that are untainted by the mud of a working relationship and the shared age group of our collective children.

If anything was to be learnt from this weekend’s experience, is that I will become a better parent of a teenager – and see the future potential in the sparks of the next few years; the mirror of others and the memories of life blurred by time has been cleared a little – and I am able to lay a collection of personal mnenomic demons to rest.

InDesign 2.0 Prepress Tips & Techniques

InDesign 2.0: Export or Distill PDFs?
Nick Hodge
Should you Export PDFs or Distill PDFs from InDesign 2.0?

InDesign 2.0: Generating Composite, Trapped PDFs
Nick Hodge
Using InDesign to generate Composite Trapped PDFs

InDesign 2.0: How to Export and Place Pages back into InDesign 2.0
Nick Hodge
Why should you export pages from InDesign as PDF rather than EPS

InDesign 2.0: Photoshop to InDesign workflow
Nick Hodge
The best way of taking Photoshop files into InDesign 2.0

InDesign 2.0: Photoshop with Spots, InDesign and Composite PDF
Nick Hodge
How to take Photoshop with Spots, Transparency and Vector into InDesign 2.0 for composite PDF

InDesign 2.0: Photoshop, Duotones into InDesign
Nick Hodge

InDesign 2.0: Printing Output Choices and Flattener Tricks (including force Greyscale export!)
Nick Hodge
How to use the Flattener to get greater colour control at output time

InDesign 2.0: Spot Colors, Transparency
Nick Hodge
InDesign 2.0 has great support for Spot Colors; this is how they work with transparency

InDesign 2.0: Text and the Transparency Flattener
Nick Hodge
Explaining how Text and Transparency Flattener interact in InDesign 2.0

InDesign 2.0: Trapping Journey with Prinergy
Nick Hodge
Specific settings in Prinergy that effect InDesign output

InDesign CS Printing Guide

partners.adobe.com: CS Printing Guides

Printing Acrobat 5.0/PDF1.4 Generated by Adobe InDesign 2.0
Nick Hodge
How to successfully generate quality print results from a PDF 1.4 from InDesign 2.0

InDesign 2.0 Scripts

InDesign 2.0: Adding Tab to Table Cells
Nick Hodge
A mini-VB application that adds a Tab character to Cell text

InDesign 2.0: Pasting As Text Only on Windows
Nick Hodge
A mini-VB application that permits the pasting as Text Only on Windows

InDesign 2.0: Automating Adding Words to the Dictionary
Nick Hodge
Scripting in InDesign 2.0 to add words to a Language Dictionary

InDesign 2.0: Word Count using Visual Basic
Nick Hodge
Scripting in InDesign 2.0 to add word count

Adobe InDesign 2.x – Scaling and resizing images in InDesign
Cari Jansen
Possibly the more difficult feature to get used to when converting from another page layout program to InDesign, is the way in which images are handled.

Adobe InDesign 2.x – Text Wrap and Alpha Channels
Cari Jansen
Text wrap and alpha channels in InDesign 2.0

Find an InDesign Service Provider (Aust & NZ)

Find an InDesign Service Provider (Worldwide)

InDesign 2.0.2 Update (Mac)
Adobe Systems Support download. 14.2Mb
Adobe Systems Support download. 14.2Mb

InDesign 2.0.2 Update (Win)
Adobe Systems Support download. 13Mb
Adobe Systems Support download. 13Mb

InDesign 2.0: Determining Document Heritage
Nick Hodge
A hidden feature will show you an InDesign document’s heritage

InDesign 2.0: Hidden Baseline Grids
Nick Hodge
Inside Using InDesign 2.0’s baseline grid

InDesign 2.0: Painting Pictures with Picket Fences
Nick Hodge
Using Compound Paths to Create Interesting Pictures in InDesign 2.0

InDesign 2.x – Swatches – adding colours from other documents & changing the default colour setup
Cari Jansen
You can add spot colours, process colours, tint and gradient swatches used in one InDesign document to another. It is not possible to do this using a simple one-click method. There is however, a semi automatic method that allows adding of colour swatches

InDesign Plugin Listing

Nick Hodge: Videos of the InDesign 2.0 Roadshow, Feb 2002

from the Future of Publishing Roadshow

Breakfast at 7:00am, Stanley Street, Sydney CBD

Breakfast Briefing at 8:00am, Stanley Street, Sydney

Breakfast at 8:00am, Stanley Street, Sydney

MacDonalds carpark, after Tom Uglys Bridge Photo

MINIs in mirror, on way to Bald Hill Lookout, Stanwell Tops

Boo checks directions due to road closure, on way to Stanwell Tops

25 MINIs arrive at at Bald Hill Lookout, Stanwell Tops

MINIs parked at Jamberoo Recreation Park

MINI Photo Opportunity

Long Line of MINIs leaving for Lunch

Lunch at Briars. Finally!

Nicks MINI Weekend

Hodge Family MINI Weekend

From the DV footage of 18th May run. Frame grab by Photoshop Elements 2.0!

MINI May 18th Drive Day

MINI May 18th Drive Day

MINI May 18th Drive Day

MINI May 18th Drive Day

MINI May 18th Drive Day

Adobe InDesign, first released in 1999, has revolutionised for-print design across the world. The quality of type, integration with Photoshop, ease of output and advanced prepress features have given publishers a very powerful tool. With power comes responsibility.

My personal journey with InDesign as a Prepress tool started with beta testing InDesign 2.0 as ACP in late 2001 InDesign 2.0: Spot Colors, Transparency

Transparency, once the bastion of Photoshop, is now unleashed at a late stage in the layout tool. Transparency can be freely be used by designers to highlight objects, reclaim image space for text and easily blending elements together in a natural way.

Many of the questions asked by customers via email, at roadshows and those who have visited this web site have been condensed into these techniques. Some of these techniques were pioneered here in Australia, and are in daily production use. Feedback and comments are welcome. nhodge@adobe.com

If you are a Prepress operator, I strongly suggest you start here: InDesign, Acrobat and Adobe Print Technical Documentation, and ensure you read InDesign CS2 Print and Prepress Guide

InDesign Prepress Articles

Adobe Lightroom

blogs.adobe.com

Creative Cow

History 2.0 plugin

How pictures are manipulated to make more appealing magazine covers.

InDesign CS2 Print and Prepress Guide
Adobe Systems
InDesign CS2: Printing and Prepress guide

InDesign CS2 Print and Prepress Guide
Nick Hodge
InDesign CS2: Printing and Prepress guide

InDesign CS: Prepress Overview
Nick Hodge
An overview of the Prepress specific features in InDesign CS

InDesign Prepress: What Are these White Boxes?
Nick Hodge
Why are these White boxes appearing in PDFs I generate from InDesign?

InDesign, Acrobat and Adobe Print Technical Documentation
Adobe Systems
Print Service Provider documentation is divided into three topic areas: Printing Guides, PDF and Printing and Color and Transparency

Lightning Brain Sudoku for InDesign CS/CS2

Markzware has released a plugin called Q2ID

InDesign Prepress: Text and the Transparency Flattener
Nick Hodge
Explaining how Text and Transparency Flattener interact in InDesign CS

InDesign Prepress: Transparency Flattener Magic
Nick Hodge
How to use the Flattener to get greater colour control at output time

InDesign Prepress: Photoshop, Duotones into InDesign
Nick Hodge
Using Duotones in InDesign CS, including duotones from Photoshop

InDesign Prepress: Printing PDFs with Transparency Generated by InDesign CS
Nick Hodge
How to successfully generate quality print results from a PDF 1.4 or 1.5 from InDesign CS

InDesign Prepress: Generating Composite, Trapped PDFs
Nick Hodge
Using InDesign CS to generate Composite Trapped PDFs

InDesign Prepress: Photoshop to InDesign workflow
Nick Hodge
The best way of taking Photoshop files into InDesign 2.0/CS

InDesign Prepress: Export or Distill PDFs?
Nick Hodge
Should you Export PDFs or Distill PDFs from InDesign 2.0/CS?

InDesign Prepress: Acrobat 6.0 Prepress Features
Nick Hodge
What is new in Acrobat 6.0 for Prepress

InDesign Prepress: Photoshop with Vector and Spots, InDesign and Composite PDF
Nick Hodge
How to take Photoshop with Spots, Transparency and Vector into InDesign 2.0 for composite PDF

96% of Australian service providers accept PDF files

Adobe InDesign Usage Survey.

Adobe Variable Data Publishing Resource Centre
Adobe Systems, Inc
Variable Data Publishing (VDP) solutions are meeting this challenge today. Adobe has been driving the technology behind VDP for more than a decade and has built an extended network of VDP solutions providers…

InDesign cracks more than half the layout traffic in Australia

Welcome to Adobe InDesign CS

For more indepth articles: Adobe InDesign: Prepress Techniques

This is written in a similar manner to: Acrobat 6.0 Professional: Graphics, Print, Prepress Overview

Since writing this introduction, Adobe has released: Adobe InDesign CS Printing Guide for Service Providers

InDesign CS, the third major revision of InDesign, contains many new prepress features that solidifies my belief that InDesign is the premiere desktop prepress tool on the market today.

Having worked between many pre-release testers and the Product Team and Engineers for nearly two years – it is such a relief to be able to talk publically about all the “new stuff”

What is this Adobe Creative Suite?

The Adobe Creative Suite is a new application that combines the full desktop versions of Photoshop CS, Illustrator CS, InDesign CS, GoLive CS and Acrobat 6.0 Professional with a new piece of technology called Version Cue. This new application installs with a single serial number, comes on single CD and is a application suite. This InDesign CS that comes with either Creative Suite Premium or Standard is the same as the single copy version.

System Requirements

InDesign CS (and the other CS applications) requires Windows 2000sp3, Windows XP Home or Professional. On the Mac, InDesign CS like Acrobat 6.0 requires at least MacOS X 10.2.4. That’s correct: no MacOS 9 support. If you are receiving InDesign CS files, you are going to need a MacOS X to run the files out. From a high quality print perspective, saving backwards is not an option.

New Prepress Features

Separation Preview

Having been exposed to this particular piece of engineering since prior to InDesign 2.0’s announcement, this has to be my favourite feature. It alone will change prepress perceptions of InDesign’s status as the best tool to work with on the desktop.

Until the advent of Quite Revealingfor Acrobat 4/5, Acrobat 6.0 Professional (Acrobat 6.0 Professional: Graphics, Print, Prepress Overview)- the only way to preview the plates that would appear at some stage of the print process was to print separations as Postscript and Distill.

InDesign CS adds a new feature called Separation Preview that is a “mode” for layout. You can work completely in this mode; placing images, changing swatches, editing text if you like – and see how the final plates will appear whilst still editing the document.

The above shows Cyan and Black plates, with a Ink Density count on a per-plate basis.

This shows a separation preview highlighting one spot colour, with the black text knocking out correctly.

I remember first seeing this feature and being on cloud 9 for hours. It has to be experienced. Thanks Matt.

Flattener Preview

Transparency, the ground-breaking set of features added in InDesign 2.0, provides designers scope to create eye catching layouts. When it comes to output, however, some of the print aspects require finessing.

To aid the print side, the Flattener Preview will show what elements are going to be effected by transparency, and in which way. The Transparency Flattener is still required in Postscript 2/3 and PDF/X workflows.

The areas highlighted in red above are Transparent Objects that will result in some transparency flattening at output.

Ink Limit Preflight

Common in newsprint and other print applications where the total ink density is tightly controlled, InDesign CS will now permit a preview of a layout – and highlight elements that are above to total ink limit as specified.

In the image above, an Ink coverage limit of 280% is specified: the areas highlighted in red on the page have more ink coverage than this percentage.

Bleeds and Slugs

No, this is not going postal on the evil garden pests. InDesign 2.0 added the ability to print with independent bleed-per-side in a document. In InDesign CS, documents can be created with predefined bleed and slug areas:

These predefined Bleeds and Slugs can be used when printing, without retyping the appropriate values.

In this image, Print Preview with Bleed has been requested.

To make life easier when creating documents in InDesign CS, page dimensions including Bleeds and Slugs can be saved.

Another commonly requested feature from longtime QuarkXpress users is the ability to see the ‘page edge’ when placing elements. Guess what, its here:

In the above screen dump, the black line is the trim size of the page, clearly shown through the image.

Word Count

Not strictly a Prepress feature, but I am going to incorporate it here! Yes, there is a word count in InDesign CS:

Not only a word count: InDesign CS also counts sentences, lines and characters. No more need for InDesign 2.0: Word Count using Visual Basic! The above image depicts a text frame that contains a certain number of characters/words etc, and the “+61” indicates that there is overset text.

Info Palette

In PDF delivery of final for-print documents, the two major errors that cause prepress headaches are RGB elements and low resolution images. InDesign always converted RGB elements in bitmaps to CMYK (if printing CMYK). InDesign CS adds the conversion of elements in RGB that are inside placed PDF elements to CMYK. (InDesign 2.0 and CS have a technique that will force EPS into CMYK or Greyscale: InDesign 2.0: Printing Output Choices and Flattener Tricks (including force Greyscale export!))

On the matter of DPI, however, there has been a reliance on the designer on “guessing” the print DPI (otherwise known as effective DPI) by calculating the percentage scaling by the original DPI. InDesign CS has a new palette known as the Info palette that previews the DPI of a placed image element:

The Info palette above shows that the placed image is a JPEG in the RGB colourspace, and due to scaling of the image, its print (effective) resolution is 288dpi in both dimensions.

Mixed Ink Support

An ink swatch in InDesign CS can be what is a Mixed Ink swatch containing spot colours and process colours.

InDesign CS also adds a new type of swatch known as Mixed Ink Group which eases the mixing of two spot colours into a varying combination of percentages.

Support for Duotone Photoshop files

DCS is the thorn in the side of the Prepress professional. It forces print workflows into separated output at a very early stage – and is a legacy of QuarkXpress. In our modern, composite workflows – DCS is a legacy that would be rather forgotten.

InDesign CS changes the scene in rather a dramatic way. DCS 1 and 2 files created from Photoshop (bitmaps only) placed into InDesign CS are recombined into composite for composite PDF/Postscript output. DCS1, for the sake of clarity, is a preseparated format where each plate is broken into a file: one each for C, M, Y and K (there is not spot colour support in DCS1). DCS2, in comparison, is a single file containing each plate – and can support spot colours.

For Photoshop files and designs that contain vector elements and transparency, this technique still applies: InDesign 2.0: Photoshop with Spots, InDesign and Composite PDF

InDesign CS also includes support for TIFF with spot colour channels, Photoshop PSD with spot channels (including Duotones, Tritones and Quadtones) and Photoshop EPS.

PDF/X Support

Like Acrobat 6.0, InDesign CS supports exporting PDFs are PDF/X compliant. More than just a version PDF, compliance also involves ensuring the elements used in the PDF match the strict ISO specification.

What is PDF/X? From the FAQ on the PDF/X site: “PDF/X is not an alternative to PDF, it’s a focused subset of PDF designed specifically for reliable prepress data interchange. It’s also an application standard, as well as a file format standard. In other words, it defines how applications creating and reading PDF/X files should behave.”

PDF/X is a set of international standards: PDF/X-1a:2001 (ISO 15930-1:2001) and PDF/X-3 (ISO 15930-3:2002). PDF is a very broad format: it permits the creation of documents ready for web delivery through to very high quality book production. PDF/X simplifies what can be in a PDF to a known range of parameters. This known, and generally acceptable range therefore gives other software in the workflow a known target. If a PDF is PDF/X compliant, there are two keys added to the PDF file.

Print Workflow Changes

A topic deeply exposed here InDesign 2.0 Prepress Tips & Techniques, there has been a fundamental change in the mechanism InDesign CS uses to print placed PDFs. Placed PDFs (and therefore placed native .ai files, too) pass through a different print mechanism similar to printing through the transparency flattener. A side effect of this print mechanism is that elements are converted to the Print colour space (CMYK, Greyscale) plus a new side effect. The placed elements are Trapped.

With InDesign CS, placed PDFs pass through InDesign’s inbuilt Trapping engine. Now you can trap composite, untrapped PDFs from various sources (like QuarkXpress) and generate a composite trapped Postscript file, and therefore PDF. This technique still applies: InDesign 2.0: Generating Composite, Trapped PDFs

A small change, and probably not documented anywhere, is the ability scale in the “decimal point” range when printing. InDesign 2.0 had a restriction of scaling at print time in whole number increments (100%, 101%, 102% etc) whereas InDesign CS supports percentages such as 100.1%. This is especially required in packaging style printing on flexographic presses.

Summary

If you are into laying out documents with great design, InDesign CS raises the bar for its competitors. From a Prepress perspective, InDesign CS is distinctly ahead of the crowd.

Avril at her 40th. To the right is Nicole McNamara (now Nicole Sharp)

Avril at her 40th. To her left is Frank Falco. A good friend since the mid 1980’s

Lucy and Avril on the bed.

Avril, November 2003.

Nick, in front of his old original white MINI. This was circa 1987. A long time ago. I loved that MINI!

Nick, in front of his old original white MINI. This was circa 1987. A long time ago. I loved that MINI!

Nick, in front of his old original white MINI. This was circa 1987. A long time ago. I loved that MINI!

Paul and Mark, Kare Kare, November 2004

Mark and Maori carving, Kare Kare, November 2004

Mark, Kare Kare, November 2004

Paul on the sands of Kare Kare, November 2004

Mark at Kare Kare, November 2004. Photo by Nick Hodge

Paul and Nick at Kare Kare, November 2004. Photo by Mark Szulc

Paul, November 2004.

Mark in silhouette at Piha, November 2004.

Paul at Piha, November 2004.

Mark and Nick, November 2004. Photo by Paul Stephens

Paul and Mark at Piha, November 2004.

Lion Rock and reflection at Piha, November 2004.

Paul (and Mark) at Piha, November 2004.

Mark and Lion Rock at Piha, November 2004.

Mark and Paul at Piha, November 2004.

Lion Rock, Piha, November 2004.

Paul and Mark set eyes on Piha, November 2004.

A common question via email and on mailing lists

: what are these

white boxes

I see in my PDF

?

There are two “white box” phenomena, both ex

plainable and both are non-fatal in your PDFs

generated from InDesign

CS.

Source InDesign file:

In this source file

, there is a spot colour (PANTONE 285C)

,

text

+

drop shadow

and a Photoshop file with transparency placed over the top.

Using S

eparation Preview (Window>Output Preview>Separation Preview), the page looks

correct

:

Using either File>Print to a Postscript file and Distilling, or File>Export as Adobe PDF using the [Press] settings, and the [High Resolution] Transparency Flattener style, results in an Acrobat 4.0/PDF 1.3 file (ref:)

Once you open the file in Acrobat 5.0 or 6.0, the following appears:

(a) depicts the “white box phenomena 1” and (b) depicts “white box phenomena 2”

(a) White Box 1: Overprint Preview

This is simple to resolve: Turn on Overprint Preview in Acrobat 5.0 or 6.0 (the free Adobe Reader does not show overprint preview)

The result is as follows. The white boxes dissappear. What are they? Firstly, white is not really white. White is infact a command in Postscript to “Knockout”. This knockout removes all colourants (printed elements) from imaging, and what shows through is the paper stock (substrate). The white we are seeing here is in fact a command to “knockout all process colours to permit the spot colour underneath to show” Overprint preview expresses these overprint/knockout commands in the PDF, and we get the result as below. The Separation Preview in Acrobat 6.0 Professional will also show the PDF correctly. Printing separations to a mjaority of devices will result in the correct output.

Some output devices are not smart enough to recognise the special overprint/knockout commands. Devices that only print Process colours, or convert the spot colours to process to proof the output may result in a view as above. This is not a limitation/bug in InDesign, but rather these output devices not respecting Acrobat 4.0/PDF1.3 constructs.

(b) White Box 2: Image/Vector Smoothing

This white box, or in fact white line, is the edge of an atomic region in the Transparency Flattened PDF. To explain this, here is the same PDF displayed using Wireframe; a feature of Enfocus Pitstop Professional:

You can see that this simple InDesign construct is split into multiple elements. The white line/box we are seeing is on the edge of one of these regions. This “breaking up” of seemingly simple InDesign elements is a function of the Transparency Flattener. Acrobat 4.0/PDF1.3 (and Postscript) cannot directly represent the transparency features. The Transparent elements are broken down into simpler atomic regions resulting in a file that will output and separate correctly.

The white lines/boxes are in fact Acrobat anti-aliasing (smoothing) the edges of these boxes. In ‘normal’ PDFs, this smoothing generates a pleasant, well, smooth, graphic elements. In a Flattened high-quality PDF, these lines are intrusive.

There is a major difference when you turn off smoothing (Smooth line art and Smooth image) in Edit>Preferences in Acrobat:

RIPs and other output devices do not smooth in a similar way, so these lines will not appear.

Suggestions for On-screen PDFs

If you are making a PDF for onscreen use, my strong suggestions are:

1. When printing/exporting, use the Ink Manager to “Convert all Spots to Process”. On screen PDFs don’t need many PANTONE colourants
2. Export as Acrobat 5.0/PDF1.4. This will result in a PDF that is not Transparency Flattened, but the PDF should be smaller and faster to display. The Reader 5.0 has been available since 2001, and is widely available. Including for MacOS 9.