HELP! Shadows not surviving transfer to DTP programs

[greenmorpher]

Help! I mentioned the cylinder I created. Now in the process of that, I added some type with special embossing and a light shadow over part of the picture I was using as the base, then flattened it to one layer and turned it into a cylinder and that was fine.

Then I added a shadow outside to it, converted the file to CMYK, but when I "save as" to TIFF or PSD and place it in InDesign 2 or Canvas X, the shadows simply becomes and ugly black.

I have tried "Fix layer" -- but that does no good.

Any ideas? I need to fix this urgently!

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com[/code]

[Hoogo]

That sounds as if the fileformat or the destination application ignores the transparency-channel. Did you add the shadow with by using effects? Is transparency enabled for that layer? What happens when you load the tiff into PL32?

[greenmorpher]

That sounds as if the fileformat or the destination application ignores the transparency-channel. Did you add the shadow with by using effects? Is transparency enabled for that layer? What happens when you load the tiff into PL32?

On the first point -- I have no idea, but what looks like a whispy, filmy shadow in PL 32 turns into a hard edged, solid lump when it gets into InDy 2 and Canvas X.

I added the shadow using menu bar | Effects | Effects | Shadow Outside.

When it was gray, it turned black, when it was red, it turned red.

The TIFFs look fine when opened in PL 32.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com

[Hoogo]

Does it look like this?
-Fix Layer
-Choose the brush-Tool, deselect CMYK (only select A) and paint on whole picture. The transparency is dropped now without any calculations to keep it smooth.

This will not solve the problem, but it might be a hint. Maybe it will help for your purpose when you turn off the transparency in the layer-properties?

Hm... Wasn't there a topic about something like this a few weeks ago? But no, that was about tga...

[greenmorpher]

I am sorry, hoogo, but I am confused.

You seem to be saying that there should be A, possibly an Alpha channel. There is no A, only C, M, Y and K.

But thanks for thinking!~

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com

[Hoogo]

At least in my Version there's a tiny bug: The channel-switches aren't updated when you switch between pages. Select another tool and then return to the paintbrush, then that button will appear again. I believe there has to be transparency, otherwise the shadow-effect would apply to the whole rectangular layer, not the painted cylinder within.

I had another idea what you can try:
-fix layer. Now the effect is gone, instead it is plotted into the layer itself. The black shadow fades into transparency.
-choose white paper-color and turn off transparency for that layer. The black shadow now fades into white.

Btw.: You have two layers? A white background layer and a layer for the cylinder?

[greenmorpher]

At least in my Version there's a tiny bug: The channel-switches aren't updated when you switch between pages. Select another tool and then return to the paintbrush, then that button will appear again. I believe there has to be transparency, otherwise the shadow-effect would apply to the whole rectangular layer, not the painted cylinder within.

I had another idea what you can try:
-fix layer. Now the effect is gone, instead it is plotted into the layer itself. The black shadow fades into transparency.
-choose white paper-color and turn off transparency for that layer. The black shadow now fades into white.

Btw.: You have two layers? A white background layer and a layer for the cylinder?

Okay -- I have it working -- but it is a workaround, in my view, and unacceptable because of that. It will NOT work in every situation.

You last sentence gave me a clue. I had only one layer. I added another layer, filled it with white, then sent it back behind the illustration layer. Then I flattened the whole lot (i.e. "Reduce to Background Layer" -- or should I have used "Merge with Background Layer"?) and saved it as a TIFF.

The shadow is now showing -- which would be fine provided I was printing on a white background but a total stuff-up if I was printing on a coloured background or importing into Canvas for a website.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com

[greenmorpher]

The emergency is over -- not entirely satisfactorily.

hoogo, it seems that the problem is as you suspected -- a failure of the target applications to recognize and implement the transparent elements within the shadows that PhotoLine is generating and exporting.

So what is the key here? Given that InDesign (especially) is a "standard" in the DTP field, then I don't see InDy as "failing" to recognize the transparency here. PL needs to PRESENT to InDy with a transparency/shadow effect that it CAN recognize.

Comment, Garhard?

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com

[Gerhard Huber]

Comment, Garhard?

yes, here I am
I am sorry, that the "owner" of the TIFF format (Adobe) doesn't use the tags of the format. There is a official way to save transparency, that PL32 uses. They don't use this way, but save a PS-Tag, with a PSD inside.
So I see it as a bug in the "standard" application.
But since the producers of the "standard" application won't fix this problem, they even won't here your bug report, I think this will be no solution for you.
So the only way to solve this problem is, I mentioned already on another threat, don't save your images in TIFF format. Save it in PSD format. PL32 can save full transparency in PSD and all Adobe applications will be able to read it.

Gerhard

[greenmorpher]

Sorry, Gerhard, InDesign 2 won't read the transparency when saving to PSD either. The shadow comes up as a solid block of the shadow colour with white outside that.

As my previous experiments showed, saving out of PL, the only transportable format is PDF. That keeps the shadow ... but does not retain the transparency. Transparency is replaced by white.

The same thing can be achieved by putting a white background as a separate layer behind the image and shadow, then merging the layers. Saving out as a TIFF or PSD will then get the shadow into InDesign or Canvas, but at the expense of having a piece of opaque white around it.

FURTHER -- I have set the layer to 200 dpi before I save ... but when I import into either InDesign or Canvas, the image appears as either 90 dpi (my screen image resolution in PL) or 72 dpi. This occurs with both PSD and PDF images, but not with TIFF.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com