Quark Forums

My company recently upgraded to Quark 7 after being on 6.5 for some time. We used Shadowcaster quite frequently. Today, I was notified of the new version for Quark 7 so I figured I'd give it a try.

Well, the results are mixed. I haven't tried everything yet, but so far, I've encountered one killer glitch. When activating a drop shadow on an object that overlaps a non-white object beneath it, there is a funky graphical anomaly that appears. Hard to describe it but it's like a series of tightly packed, thin white lines appear where the shadow would otherwise be. It's edge is very blocky - almost looks like a video type of glitch.

If the shadow falls on open area or a white box, the shadow displays correctly. Any other background and the blockiness shows up. It appears in both the preview window AND in the actual hi-res file that is built.

As a test, I installed on another system running Quark 7 with identical results. The other "effects" seem to work just fine. I had no trouble with "bevels" or glows. Obviously, this glitch makes the rendered image unusable if I need the dropshadow functionality.

Can anyone offer assistance on something else to try, or is this perhaps a bug in the Xtension? Thanks.

David,

Can you email me an example of this problem? Like maybe a screenshot of the layout along with the image file created by ShadowCaster?

thanks,
Dan Logan
Technical Product Manager, Quark
dlogan@quark.com

Sure, Dan. I'll send you a test via email in just a few moments.

Thanks.
-David

would it be possible to post a small screen shot of this anomaly?

grahampm:

would it be possible to post a small screen shot of this anomaly?

I would be happy to do that, if I could figure out how to upload it. Is there a way to do that on these forums? If not, I can PM or email them. I had been in contact with Dan Logan of Quark and sent him the files to test. Not sure what the results were. So far, the only thing we can figure out is that there IS a distinct difference between the results I get on a G4 and an Intel iMac.

send everything to Dan. He will know the next step to take.

grahampm:

send everything to Dan. He will know the next step to take.

ok. since I haven't heard any updates from Dan in a while, I guess the issues are still being worked on. I'm curious if any other G4/G5 users have encountered this. I hope the problem can be resolved as I'll be using the G4 for a while longer since an upgrade to an intel mac isn't in my immediate future.

I confirmed this is a PPC-specific issue when rendering under-coat effects in Multiply mode, so Drop Shadow, Outer Glow, Outer Bevel and Emboss are all affected (although they all work fine on Intel Macs). The problem is that when the effect is composited against an underlying color there is a white-stripe artifact visible in the area of compositing. The problem is only noticeable when composing the effect against a non-white background and Multiply works when applied directly to a layer rather than being used in an effect.

Given the "Quark Labs" status of ShadowCaster right now it's hard to say when or if we'll get an opportunity to fix this, but in the meantime your best workaround is probably to use Darken instead of Multiply. Assuming you're rendering the effect in CMYK then you won't notice a difference. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Dan Logan
Technical Product Manager
Quark

Dan Logan (Quark):

I confirmed this is a PPC-specific issue when rendering under-coat effects in Multiply mode, so Drop Shadow, Outer Glow, Outer Bevel and Emboss are all affected (although they all work fine on Intel Macs). The problem is that when the effect is composited against an underlying color there is a white-stripe artifact visible in the area of compositing. The problem is only noticeable when composing the effect against a non-white background and Multiply works when applied directly to a layer rather than being used in an effect.

Given the "Quark Labs" status of ShadowCaster right now it's hard to say when or if we'll get an opportunity to fix this, but in the meantime your best workaround is probably to use Darken instead of Multiply. Assuming you're rendering the effect in CMYK then you won't notice a difference. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Dan Logan
Technical Product Manager
Quark

Dan, thanks for following up and confirming my findings. I will have to try the workaround you suggested (using "Darken" instead of "mulitply"). If it works well, then it's OK by me.