Quark Forums

 Howdy Gang,

 I'm trying to create a pdf from a Quark 7.5 job which has a solid picture box casting a shadow over another picture box with a circular blend. The area which is being rasterized to create the shadow seems to be omitting the area of the circular blend box which it overlaps. I've tried creating a pdf via my normal method which is using the adobe pdf printer and I've also tried exporting as pdf Quark's own way and both create the same error. Any idea how I can fix this?

I've attached an image of what I'm talking about so you can see:

 Thanks,

Tom

I would think this is beyond quark 7's capability. You would have to upgrade to quark8.1 and Export with Native transparency. If you've access to Illustrator you could Export the quark page as an EPS, without the shadows, then add them in Illustrator and save as an EPS then bring the whole page back into quark.

Thanks for the reply Glenn. That's crazy. Why have a feature in the app if it doesn't work correctly. I'm sure you're right though. Quark just can't handle adding the shadow to a complex blend like this. Thanks for the workaround suggestion. I hadn't thought of that.

Are you using Quark 8? Is it worth splashing the extra cash for it?

You don't have to push quark7 very hard to find its limits with transparency flattening. If you can avoid too many background elements, any sort of rotations and have the text on top (oh yes and avoid mixing objects with different color spaces) then you'll be fine.

 I took advantage of the upgrade to v7 and get v8 for free offer so for me it was worth the cash

v8.1 is the best version for a long time, Exporting Native transparency in PDF is a double production boost, it gives reliable results and is much much faster. On the downside 8.1 still can't place and retain native Transparency PDF, has cripplingly limited options for dealing with placed PANTONES, and no Separation Preview. You can download a demo of 8 and run that without disrupting your 7 install, bear in mind that v9 will be along in due course.