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• • February 14, 2017 at 2:42 pm #92194
    Colleen Shannon

    Member

    Coming from a prepress background, it irks me when designers use, for example, 20% transparency when they really just want of a 20% screen of a swatch (Transparencies can be a print production nightmare). What do you recommend as a way to “flatten” or transform these transparent frames into screens? For gradients?

  • February 14, 2017 at 3:42 pm #92198
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Hi Colleen! Why do you say that transparency can be a print production nightmare? I mean, there’s the spot color problem… but if everything is process color, what kinds of troubles do you have? In general, it shouldn’t matter if people apply a 20% opacity vs. a 20% tint — except that if they do a tint, they may have to also remember to do Overprint Fill, and then they can’t see it unless Overprint Preview is on… so I generally find people like using Transparency/Opacity more.

  • February 14, 2017 at 6:16 pm #92206
    Colleen Shannon

    Member

    You have no idea the horrors I see!

    I’m cleaning up several complicated booklets that have been used by different designers over the years and I get to deal with them for the next 5 years.

    1. Example: I have a 5×5 frame with a gradient and 85% transparency. Now the client wants me to place art behind it, but doesn’t want it to show through the gradient frame. If I try to replicate the gradient with screens…the results are hard to match. Maybe you have a better idea to deal with this.

    2. Color consistency. 20% transparent Cyan and 20% screen of Cyan don’t always render the same (see JPG), so I am cleaning up documents that use both methods to define the same build in artwork that doesn’t need to be transparent. There’s only so much color management I can control, so the best I can do is maintain consistent CMYK builds. If artwork isn’t meant to be transparent and things get moved around/behind it, that can be a major problem.

    https://i.imgur.com/SHFXyB9.jpg

    Yes, I am a dinosaur.

  • February 14, 2017 at 6:34 pm #92207
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    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.

  • February 15, 2017 at 11:39 am #92229
    Colleen Shannon

    Member

    re: 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. <— this is true for process builds, but not necessarily for JPG export. Often I don’t control the final output—it goes onto multiple vendors for print and web. Some will export from InDesign directly to JPG, where the RGB conversions aren’t equal. (as my image shows)

    While we’re at it – I often see two frames stacked, 100% type on top and one below with 20% transparency, when that could have been done with one text frame and a build. Ah, well! I’ll keep telling them about this site. :)

    cheers
    colleen

  • February 15, 2017 at 12:13 pm #92232
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Hi Coleen! Thanks for sticking with this discussion.
    On the JPEG (or PNG) export… that’s because it’s being pushed into RGB, of course. However, you can still make the two methods (20% tint & 20% opacity) match by turning on the Simulate Overprint checkbox in the Export PNG or Export JPEG dialog box.

    Whenever you’re pushing colors to an RGB space, I recommend using the Simulate Overprint — it exists in the Print and Export PDF dialog boxes, too.

  • February 15, 2017 at 12:23 pm #92236
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    I went and researched this some more, and I have to say… there are definitely times when the two colors (tint vs. transparency) will not match. wow. This is very good fodder for a blog post… I’ll work on it.

    So, I wouldn’t say that you shouldn’t use transparency, but I do agree that you should probably be consistent in which you choose: transparency or a tint.

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