Reply To: Flattening Transparent Frames

You’re not a dinosaur! And you’re right that transparency can make things complicated when you don’t have to use it.
But I want to clear up a couple of things:

First, if you have 100% cyan and you set it to a 20% tint it will be exactly the same color as a 100% cyan set to a 20% Opacity. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look the same in InDesign at first glance. But if you turn on Separations Preview, or View > Overprint Preview, then it will look the same on screen. And Sep Preview will show that the color is the same: 20% cyan.

Second, as soon as you start talking about gradients, then sure, there are bound to be differences. It’s really apples and oranges at that point.

I don’t think your #1 item above really fits, because you’re asking “how would I do this?” Right? That’s different than it being a print production problem.