now you see it, you don't …

[FieryPantone]

Another surprise from my inherited doc set, though in general my predecessor didn't do a bad job: a paragraph style specifies a background colour (CMYK, process) to give white text on a blue background on the cover page. No problems on screen, otherwise I would of course have noticed earlier – but creating a .pdf unhelpfully drops the background so I end up with discreet/confidential white on white.  What's going on, and how I sort it?  N  FM 10.0.2.419 Acrobat X Pro 10.1.2 Windows 7

[Matt S - Tech Comm Tools]

As the old joke goes...

Patient: Doc, my text doesn't print when I define my paragraph style to print white on a blue background...

Doc: Don't do that!

Assuming that's not an option, however,

• Have you checked View > Color > Views to see if the Blue color is set to print properly?
• Have you tried both
  • Save as PDF
  • Printing to the Adobe PDF print driver?

[Arnis_Gubins]

Niels,

As Matt asked, which route are you taking to create the PDF - SaveAsPDF or printing to the AdobePDF printer or to a .ps file and distilling? Are you trying to create CMYK or RGB output? Which joboptions were specified for the PDF?

[FieryPantone]

Patient: but the user interface says I can …

First quick check shows that the 'dentical same colour definition is used in two styles: once as a background, where it doesn't show up in the .pdf, and once in a heading where it shows up as [at least] I would expect. To produce the .pdf, I'm using Save as PDF from the book window. More on this later, if I survive the day ahead ;-}

[Van Kurtz]

Niels,

You mention the same color definition used in two styles. Is there ONE color definition? OR are there TWO color definitions, each with the same components? If the latter, maybe the one used in the background is set Not to Print.

Van

[FieryPantone]

Unfortunately, no – one colour definition, set to Process, CMYK. White, of course, is set to Don't print.

Is there anything in the colour definitions I should report back on? unknown territory for me …

N

[Matt S - Tech Comm Tools]

<snip> Patient: but the user interface says I can …</snip> 

Fair enough!

So, does the color print when applied to a frame background, or when applied as the color (not the background color) of text?

[FieryPantone]

… used in two styles: once as a background, where it doesn't show up in the .pdf, and once in a heading where it shows up as [at least] I would expect.

Yup, used as a text colour (that's what I meant by my ambiguous reference to a heading) it prints as you'd hope and expect. I'll check for frame backgrounds.

N