I’m using AI CS5.1 and ID CS5.5 to build the latest edition of a heavily illustrated college textbook that I’ve worked on many times before. This time, I thought I’d try something new and place the Illustrator figures in an InDesign art box defined with an Object Style as follows: 10% cyan fill and a subtle Inner Glow effect in a slightly darker blue. It looks great, but I noticed that a couple of my test AI figures showed up in the Preflight panel with a warning that they didn’t have sufficient resolution.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Oh, he’s using raster effects in the AI files, and his settings are at the default 72 dpi.” But that’s not it. There are no raster effects in these AI files. Plus, get this: the same graphics don’t generate the Preflight warning when they’re in a basic graphic frame. And they don’t generate the error if I redefine the “art box” Object Style to drop the Inner Glow. But wait, there’s more!
I noticed that even with the Inner Glow, there are several other AI files that do NOT set off the Preflight warning. I kept testing and testing, and finally figured out what it was. Any AI file that used a gradient would trigger the the resolution warning. I tried fading from color to white and also to color to 0% color, in case white was the problem, but it made no difference. Any gradient of any color would cause ID’s Preflight to give me the resolution warning when placed inside a graphic frame with an inner glow.
If I use ID’s Object Layer Options to turn off the layer that contains the offending gradients, the warning disappears.
The only way I can figure out how to keep the gradients in my AI files AND the Inner Glow in my ID art boxes is to place the AI file in a normal transparent graphic frame, draw a separate empty frame and assign the “art box” Object Style, and just stack the two. Either that, or I can just ignore the resolution warning as spurious.
Anybody have any experience with this? Better yet, does anybody know another workaround?
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