Shadows in PDF DP7

[gwpriester]

fdog - You do not list any Xara products on your profile so it makes it difficult to address your issue.

This is an old Workbook article that explains how to create a true CMYK soft Drop Shadow http://www.xaraxone.com/webxealot/workbook33/page_1.htm

[mwenz]

Here is the 'Sample' Xara File and the output from the PDF.

In the PDF the Top heading has a square around it. Nothing complex in this Xara document yeet the problem still plagues me.

Turn off "Preserve bitmap tiling" in the PDF options.

Take care, Mike

[Luciano]

Jeff,
your black text has overprinting selected, the cyan component you added to black text is useless and might cause loss of quality in the final printed output, I would use a 100% K only.

Another trick: the problem of the rectangle under shadows or transparencies is caused by CMYK -> RGB -> CMYK internal translations that DP7 does. If the shapes under your shadows have colours not defined in CMYK the problem does not occur.
In the attached file I redefined the three orange colours to HSV and the shadow outputs correctly.

[caleblt]

CMYK shadows in PDF
1) Select all objects whith shadow (Page and Layer gallery).
2) Press shift+ctrl+s.
3) Select all shadow objects (Page and Layer gallery).
4) Double click on PANTONE Process Black in Colour gallery.
5) Export to PDF Acrobat Reader 8 (v.1.7), Bitmap compression - none.
See this lesson - http://xaradesigners.blogspot.com/20...-pro-tiff.html

[JaffDave]

Don't get me wrong here, I love Xara and have used it for years, I'm just not sure it's going to cut it for the type of work i'm doing for print which is fine considering the price tag and other options I have available. I t would have been nice though.

There are far more issues than just the export with shadows, some of the pantone color palette supplied are a little out of date (as mentioned by Xara in another thread) with Pantone colors not matching. I've just purchased the Adobe suite, I don't have time for all of these work arounds. The colors i see on screen now match what i export into a PDF.

Even after I calibrated my monitors the colors looked different while working with Xara compared to in the Adobe software. See my screen shots, Only when I exported the final files in PDF from Xara did they then look as intended. I'm sorry most of you probably accept this but I need to see what I'm doing on screen is as close as possible to my exported final image.

Luciano the 50% cyan I added to the black text is not useless, 100% black creates a dull lifeless black when printed, I used 50% cyan to create a rich black which is something I have done for many years.

Thank everone for your input on this subject.

[JaffDave]

Luciano

The colors you have now selected do not match the intended colors on output, The color I had on screen is the clients branded color scheme taken from their logo. I'm sorry your suggestions here are not viable with this job.

[Luciano]

The background colour replacement I did was just a work-around, I understand it is not the best choice if you have precise color scheme.
I too add cyan to black areas, but not to text because I am afraid that alignment errors of plates might show other inks aside the black text.

I too believe that CMYK -> RGB -> CMYK internal translations problems should have been corrected some versions back. Sadly this problems cannot be seen in the CMYK preview in DP7.

[JaffDave]

Thanks for taking the time to look into this for me. Much appreciated!