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Faint, ghosted boxes appear on printed colour proof

2009-09-13 22:16:26

sambodhiprem

Registered: Sep 13 2009

Posts: 2

Hi,

I've recently got a colour proof of a book I'm designing, where some cut-out images have a faint, ghosted box around them.
Not all cut-out images display this faint box, but all of them are sitting on top of colored backgrounds.

The colour proof was printed from a pdf that was created with InDesign CS3 on an iMac.
I've used 'High Quality Print" as my Adobe PDF Preset.
I use Acrobat Professional 8.1.6

These faint, ghosted boxes are not visible in the pdf on screen, they are only visible on the printed page.
I've also noticed that the same cut-out image can behave differently on different backgrounds.

Can you help?

Sincerely,

Sambodhi Prem
Oparau, New Zealand

My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro 8.1.6, Macintosh

2009-09-14 00:56:47

UVSAR

Registered: Oct 29 2008

Posts: 1357

Without seeing the file we can't be certain, but one potential cause is that the offending images are in a different color space (such as RGB instead of CMYK), and when the printer's internal software converts the entire page to CMYK it's resulting in a shift in "white". There are also a number of potential problems if the PDF still contains layers and transparency, which is why we always advise documents that are being sent to digital print houses should be saved as PDF/X-1a:2001 rather than the "internal" presets like High Quality Print and Press Quality.

In Acrobat Pro's Preflight menu you can search for different color spaces, transparency, etc. using the analysis section - or of course convert the document to /X-1a and try proofing it again. Your printer will also be able to advise what's likely to be going on, and will hopefully be able to test just one page with your new settings.