Print options - Imagesetting - overprinting ???

**minimiro** · 25 May 2008, 02:17 PM

Overprinting on elements of design or black text or whatever didnt apply for you.... but did you ask and your print company and printer persons???

Like specialist in print company I can say you just one - overprinting of black text, trapings and etc a litlle improvements can save your time on press-mashine. And give always better results than other case - without trapings and overprints...

Dont forget that you see your color objects like flat filled on screen, but in fact colors in CMYK are obtained by raster screens from four colors, so where you see on screen one line where are border between two colors, in fact on printing sheet this is border which is created from dots from different colors and always you can see the white from the sheet between them if you didnt use overprint or some trapping... I hope you undertsood me

**alexbozhenov** · 25 May 2008, 10:23 PM

Behzad,

Hmm... Overprinting for the text in Black is a very good thing. If some printers do not ask you to do that, I guess they correct your files at their end...

**behzad** · 26 May 2008, 02:57 AM

Hi Alex, I am not sure, never been asked to do it and never had any problems. I will ask them next time.

**minimiro** · 26 May 2008, 11:10 AM

the desision of that problem is very simple for printers

by def they just always overprint blacks over 95%

**behzad** · 26 May 2008, 01:44 PM

Exactly, I think when printers go to ripping process they take care of that.
But always ask them.

**StephanP** · 26 May 2008, 05:47 PM

Well guys,
don't get all flamed up about this.

I have an update here, but I'm afraid it's not a good one.
I disabled the "Print options - Always Overprint Black"
And I made sure to enable "Overprint Fill" for all text-objects that float over a colored background box.
I sent the PDF/X-1a to the printer's and he continues to see the texts knocked-out from the colored background boxes. He uses Adobe Acrobat to check the CMYK color separations.

From your contributions above, I guess we all agree that this is not the expected outcome.

I sent the file to Xara support for further scrutiny.

Stephan

**Luciano** · 26 May 2008, 08:59 PM

Stephan,

I believe it is an area where Xara developers might look a little deeper and it might prove it is not a recent problem.

See link
http://talkgraphics.com/showthread.p...ight=overprint

Luciano

**Albacore** · 27 May 2008, 08:33 AM

I have not joined in this topic because I believe you were getting the best in from "minimiro" as he has a lot of experience in this subject. If I was in your shoes I would do what your were advised but also put the text on the top most layer this is from my experience with the same problem with InDesign. Now when I converted your brochure to PDF I could have sworn that the text was on the same layer as many other bits of the brochure but I can't be sure as I have dumped your file. Please, please try this cos I had real problems with this before and it was a trick that I learned from the Adobe forums.

**StephanP** · 27 May 2008, 09:07 AM

Yep Albacore,

You remember correctly that text and the underlying colored boxes are on the same layer.
Do I understand it correctly that you suggest that I move my text to a separate layer?

Stephan

**Luciano** · 27 May 2008, 09:19 AM

Stephan,

Never leave text under any shadow effects nor any transparent image, otherwise your text is turned into a bitmap when exported as PDF x1a.

But if your printer finds that there are still knock outs I believe this is not the case.
I hope that one day Xara developers take a serious look at overprint.
Did you note that Newsletter templates in Xara pro 4 are still in composite black and no overprint?
I would have expected them in 100%K with overprint.
Again I believe "show printer color" view mode should be consistent with pdf CMYK output; I am sure there are no knock outs if you look at your file in XaraXtreme under overprinted black text.

Ciao
Luciano