flatten file

hello,

i am trying to print a file that has images and text boxes in it. for some reason, the text boxes are getting a gray "shadow" behind them. this is on a high end laser printer at kinkos.

the staff person said that i needed to "flatten" the file first to get rid of this anomaly. this is new to me. i did not create any layers in the file, but according to this person, there are layers in the file, regardless.

is it possible to flatten the file before exporting as pdf?

thanks, gregg

Hello Greg--flattening is forcing areas with transparency to fully rasterize.

And I suppose the text has a drop shadow or other effect? Try exporting the PDF as Adobe Reader 4 (PDF 1.3)

This should flatten the file. The text will not be live anymore if there is an effect applied to it, the underlying image, graphic, etc. If there is text that does not have effects, it should still be live text.

Take care, Mike

thanks for the reply, mike. yes, there is a drop shadow behind the text.

i'm using xara pgd v 6. i don't see an option to save as pdf 1.3 (just pdf)

can i do this with v6?

P&GD does not have that option. Only PDF. Oops, I just checked, version 7 does have this option, though I am not sure if version 6 does.

Select High Quality PDF option then click the PDF > Advanced Options button. You should see a PDF Version Compatibility drop down list at the top area of the dialog.

The drop shadow is forcing the text to export as a bitmap.

You might try removing the shadow, copy your text area to the clipboard, change the color of the remaining text to 40% black and move the text to the right and down a few pixels.

Paste your text back on top using Edit > Paste > Paste in Place.

This will give you a vector drop shadow and should eliminate the gray text area shadow.

Thanks for the info on version differences.

Actually, one wants the text to become a bitmap along with the bitmap shadow during the writing of the PDF where possible--i.e., a flattened file.

But Gary's fix is the tried and true means of how we all created drop shadows for a long time. This may not fully cure the issue, but it should.

As well, FedEx Office (Kinkos) can also flatten the file inside of Acrobat--unless all they have is Adobe Reader.

Take care, Mike

Photo & Graphic Designer 6 offers the PDF under Advanced Options.

thanks all for the help. looks like i have a few options to solve this. going to check out the advanced options now.

soquili, i've hunted all over for pdf / advanced options and cannot find. can you please tell me how to get there? thank you.

There will be a series of dialogs the 3 images attached show those leading up to the advanced dialog I posted previously.

Unfortunately the last update to the forum software seems to arbitrarily rearrange images.

Select pdf from the export dialog, then type in the filename for your pdf file and click open, another dialog will open where you can click on Advanced Options.

weird, i tried that dialoge twice, no luck, went straight to export. tried again, and it came up... finally. thanks much. g

Glad you have it working.