Reply To: Dither or Noise in Gradients w/ new InDesign??

Hi Kenny. There is no change as regards the way InDesign (or Illustrator, for that matter, which creates gradients the same way) handle vector gradients, which is what these are. Technically, I think it would be a very hard thing to engineer noise into a vector object without rasterizing it.

For that kind of artwork, I take one of two approaches, the usual one being to create what I need in Photoshop and place it in the InDesign document.

Occasionally, I’ll place a pre-made greyscale, high-res noise image (50% grey with noise added, jpeg or tiff) and color it with the gradient, or a solid color with a gradient feather. In some situations that is the best approach. The image must be greyscale, to allow InDesign to color it properly. Give the image a blend mode of Color Burn or Hard Light at a suitably low opacity to finesse the effect. This does eliminate banding.

All that said, modern computer-to-plate workflows are far less likely to have banding issues on press than in times past, particularly if the shop uses stochastic screening rather than the traditional half-tone angled screens.