Placing full page PDF ads on my newspaper page folio

[DigitalCrapShoveler]

Read about it here.

http://www.solidoffice.com/openoffice/nyc/

[gnubler]

Honestly I'm with you Joe. While I won't be going back to Quark I think it will get worse when Adobe is the only game in town... besides PAP.

They're not already? Quark is just Quark, a page layout app. Adobe has far more products covering all areas of desktop publishing & web design. I think it was Quark 6 that added that vomitous "Convert to Web Page" feature which nobody dared use. If Quark considered KISSING (Keeping It Simple, Stupid) and just reverted back to version 4, maybe modernized the interface a bit AND cut their effin' price in half they might have a chance.

But still, there is just no comparison with InDesign. I have no reason to use Quark if I already have InDesign.

[DigitalCrapShoveler]

Unless of course you have customers that still use it. Corel, Publisher, Excel and Word all fit in that canoe.

[gnubler]

Unless of course you have customers that still use it. Corel, Publisher, Excel and Word all fit in that canoe.

I think a 'Chinese junk' is a more appropriate term.

[DigitalCrapShoveler]

Too stable.

[DigitalCrapShoveler]

How about this?

[Joe]

HEADLINE: DESINGER TAKES CONTROL OF SHIP

[DigitalCrapShoveler]

The U.S.S. Quark Xpress.

[jimking]

Apparently this transparency issue is going over my head in someway. Let me explain my flow then tell me where I'm getting confused. The client provides print ready 4/c pdfs, all made from quark 7.1. The files all use some sort of transes on all their pieces including text, drop shadows, placed illy and ps files with tranes. I trouble shoot these files the normal way and 99% of the time everything is ok and prints ok. I'm assuming if there was a trans issue there would not be tranparency where there should be? White boxes, shadows not overprinting but knocking out instead, colors overprinting when they shouldn't? Even when I receive their native quark files output ok. At the moment (not for long) about 80% of these pdfs are imposed using Dynastrip, others are imposed in Indy. Now, maybe I'm confused about the term "live tranparency"?

[Joe]

Live transparency within Quark gets flattened at output for any version before Quark 8.1. So while Quark can have transparent objects inside the Quark file it has always had to flatten them at output until version 8.1 was released. But even with 8.1, Quark can only work with it's own transparent objects. Not those in an existing PDF.

From Adobe: At its simplest, the process of flattening converts all overlapping areas in a stack of transparent objects into a collection of opaque objects that retains the appearance of the original transparent objects when printed.

That is from this Adobe PDF on transparency. It was originally written about CS2 but it's still relevant.

Here is the PDF: [smg id=222 type=av]

Below is a screen shot from the flattener preview in Acrobat. The pink area in the page are the areas of live transparency. You will not see this in a PDF created from Quark before version 8.1

[smg id=221]

And finally, here is the PDF from that screenshot that contains live transparency exported from InDesign CS3. Try placing it in your version of Quark and see if it makes a good PDF. I'm interested to see what it does.

[smg id=223 type=av]

[jimking]

Joe, I downloaded your pdf. I tried to place it in quark, but I got an "unknown error". I then placed your pdf in Indy and exported it as a "press quality" compatibility "Acrobat 7", tried to place and got the same error. I then re-exported using compatibility "Acrobat 5" instead and was able to place in quark. I printed to PS, distilled and generated a good pdf. I can email you the file if you'd like. I will say that I've read in the past when pertaining to trans in quark you do need to choose compatibility "Acrobat 5" or under.     

[Joe]

Joe, I downloaded your pdf. I tried to place it in quark, but I got an "unknown error". I then placed your pdf in Indy and exported it as a "press quality" compatibility "Acrobat 7", tried to place and got the same error. I then re-exported using compatibility "Acrobat 5" instead and was able to place in quark. I printed to PS, distilled and generated a good pdf. I can email you the file if you'd like. I will say that I've read in the past when pertaining to trans in quark you do need to choose compatibility "Acrobat 5" or under.   

Thanks Jim, I don't really need it as you have proven my point. :tongue: Printing to PS flattened the transparency in my original PDF which will make it "compatible" with Quark and still illustrates that you can't place a PDF into Quark that contains live transparency. There are workarounds like the one you found but these days I'm 100% against flattening before output. Yes, I still do it on occasion, but I don't like it. :laugh: