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I am using Quark 7.5 on Windows XP and I have an issue with transparencies. I have a background on the page of a solid colour set at 10% shade (not opacity) then I drop either an eps or a tif image file over the top, both image formats have a transparent background. Then I output the file to a postscript and convert to a pdf for printing using distiller... All fairly straightforward. The issue I have is that you can see the area of the image boxes as a lighter area over the background. So each image is showing it's image box as a rectangle of lighter colour over the background.... Why is that? I can get rid of the problem by setting the clipping to the alpha channel of the image, but I don't like doing this as I find Quark clipping paths are not that accurate. Any suggestions or an explanation of why it happens would be really appreciated! Thanks Mark

Is your solid colour a spot or cmyk or rgb, it ideally needs to be the same as your picture. Try As Is for your output color space. 

The solid colour is cmyk, the background of the picture is transparent as is the background colour of the image box.

I meant the opaque part of your picture, its color sapce

I suspect unwanted Color Management.

is your picture is a photoshop Tiff? what sort of file is the EPS?

Er, not sure what you mean, there's a mix of line drawings and photos. The line drawings are illustrator eps files with a transparent background. The photos are photoshop tif files, some have a layer mask creating a transparent background some are cropped images placed on a transparent background. All images are CMYK.

 There you go... 3 different sorts of "transparency"

I'm not sure about the TIFFS, there was a time when quark was recommending PSD instead of TIF but I think that may have been v8, I guess all of these would work fine with InDesign, Layer Masks is an extra level of complexity so you'll have to wait for someone to come along who knows whether these worked with quark 7.5

As for the vector illustrator EPS that's the simple one, and it should work without the different coloured background boxes you describe, did you try As Is? 

One likely scenario for these type of boxes is that the top and bottom objects need to be 'flattened" to a new object, the first stage of this flattening is to harmonise the Color space, in your case the part of the bottom object is being left behind, it may be being treated differtently to the new "flattened" object.

Thanks for the replies.... I did try 'As Is' and whilst it was an improvement, the image boxes were still visibly lighter... Of course, this may just be in viewing the pdf and the print version will be ok? 'As Is' also had same problem with both eps and tif formats.

Glenn McDowall:

I'm not sure about the TIFFS, there was a time when quark was recommending PSD instead of TIF but I think that may have been v8,

 

That actually started with version 6.x The PSD XTtension was Dave Ebersole's baby (with Dan collaborating) It's improved over time, but AFAIK it still can't handle complex layered PSDs very well.

MarkyBoy. XPress is capable of handling transparent PDFs, but your output (as you are experiencing) can be wacky. Oftentimes, XPress 7.x will choke on it. XPress 8.x does a better job, but not by much. My experience with XPress clipping paths is much different than yours. But if you are relying on XPress doing the job versus making a clipping path in Photoshop and then importing the TIF then I can see why you would have this opinion.

There is an alternate way to try if you rely on Distiller for creating PDFs. You can Export to PDF, but in your Preferences set the export to be a Postscript file and not a PDF. XPress 7.x and above have what are called PDF Marks. That allows transparency in the PS file, not something you can get when you print to ps because doing it that way always flattens the transparency. That leads to the effect you are getting.

You'll need to make a PDF Output style that has Export Transparency Natively set so that XPress does not flatten the PS file. Here's the rub though. Distiller is default set to reject any transparent PS files it gets. So, you have to edit a job setting. Find your job settings wherever they are stored on your PC. Duplicate the one you want to use and give it a different name. Open it in WordPad or a text editor. Find the line where it says /transparency = false (can't remember the exact format, but it's something like that). Change false to true. Save. Quit Distiller if you have not already. Reopen it and select this new job option. Then drop your exported PS file on to Distiller. If your job option is Acrobat 5 or newer the transparency will be preserved in the PDF and your problem should be eliminated.

 

Excellent explanation Erik but MarkyBoy only has v7.5, all the Native transpaerncy stuff is for Quark8.1 and later.

You may be right. I'll have to look on my Mac when I get home. I recall a post where Matthias mentioned that PDF Marks came in in version 7.5. But I found a post where I quoted 8.1 so you are probably correct.

Thanks guys... Unfortunately, no native transparency settings on 7.5!

There wouldn't be any quark applied opacity applied to any of these images or boxes ?

 

 

In the knowledgebase it says Quark can use Alpha Channels as a feathered edge to cut-outs but isn't clear whether  these are separate to Layer Masks.

To apply an alpha mask to the selected picture, choose an alpha channel from the Measurements palette’s Mask drop-down menu.

 

Hi Glenn Yes, I already have that set up.

Hi Guys,

The issue seems to be related to flattening.

Could you please try this: Apply an Opacity of 99% to the box below the image (the box that has the shade), then export as PDF.

Does that improve output?

Hi Sarbjit Thanks for the reply, no it doesn't solve the problem by applying a 99% opacity... It does improve it a little bit but the transparent part of the image box is still flattened to a lighter colour than the background it sits over.