• Global community
    • Language:
      • Deutsch
      • English
      • Español
      • Français
      • Português
  • 日本語コミュニティ
    Dedicated community for Japanese speakers
  • 한국 커뮤니티
    Dedicated community for Korean speakers
Exit
2

Indesign (Overprint Fill) bug? "White" does not print!

Explorer ,
Oct 16, 2013 Oct 16, 2013

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Prologue

I faced an issue that took some days to solve, with help from experienced professionals.

I feel it is a bug, or atleast there is something that can be done in InDesign software to prevent it from happening.

I share here as a discussion, as I wonder how this is not faced by anyone else (?!) before this can be reported as a bug.

Issue

My white text would not print. I felt I had made no mistake, or did I? or did InDesign not let me correct (overprint fill option is greyed out for white!)?

The specifics are illustrated in the attached images:

1. The color value of "white boxes" swatch which is used for text

InDesign 1 color values.png

2. As is view of content without Overprint Preview

InDesign 2 All looks good.png

3. As is view of content WITH Overprint Preview (some white text disappears) - compare the area below the MAPS title.

InDesign 3 Some white text disappears.png

4. Inspection of visible white text

InDesign 4 inspection of visible white.png

5. Inspection of invisible white text (the cuplrit is nailed!)

But wait! the overprint fill option is disabled (greyed out) but shows a tick! I understand/assume that for white/paper this option is disabled. but then how come it is showing ticked.

InDesign 5 inspection of invisible white marked.png

Solution (hack?)

- Change the invisible text to any other non-white color

- Untick "overprint fill"

- change color back to white/paper

- Now white text becomes visible and is able to print!

Hmm, now is that not a software bug?

Views

18.1K

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Advisor ,
Oct 16, 2013 Oct 16, 2013

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Without seeing the styles used or the actual file it's hard to determine. My initial thought is that you have a character/paragraph style applied to the text that disappears which has a "overprint fill" setting. Maybe this post has some further insight?

http://indesignsecrets.com/beware-overprinting-white.php

EDIT::// I meant to add this but my trigger finger was too fast. Why are you using a white process swatch when all you need to use is the paper swatch? White is unprintable unless it's as a spot color.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Explorer ,
Oct 16, 2013 Oct 16, 2013

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Thanks for the link Rik Ramsay. Yes that link describes the scenario exactly as I faced. Interestingly the author says "It’s a subtle but dangerous bug."

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Oct 16, 2013 Oct 16, 2013

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Why are you using a created white swatch? Is there some special purpose here? If not, use paper.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Explorer ,
Oct 16, 2013 Oct 16, 2013

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Thanks Bob Levine and Rik Ramsay: <about why not paper> In my learning phase of Indesign (I am just a few months old user of Indesign), approaching things in a modular way, I thought using my own "white" will give me the flexibility to change it to a slight grey or something else later. that is why a "duplicate" white/paper color.

I will try using paper to see if it helps. But what I still don't get is: "If white cannot be allowed to overprint-fill (the property is greyed out) why changing that tick using my solution/hack helps?"

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Oct 16, 2013 Oct 16, 2013

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

If white cannot be allowed to overprint-fill (the property is greyed out) why changing that tick using my solution/hack helps?"

When you made the swatch it probably had some value other than 0|0|0|0 and you set it to Overprint, then changed it to 0|0|0|0.

There's nothing wrong with having a swatch that's variable, but in general you want to leave Overprint unchecked when you apply color except for small black type.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Explorer ,
Oct 16, 2013 Oct 16, 2013

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Yes Rob Day, you are right. And thanks for that last tip: "In general you want to leave Overprint unchecked when you apply color, except for small black type."

To be honest, learning and exploring Indesign on my own, I made some wrong assumptions trying to relate wrong concepts with the terms. In this particular case, aware of overprint as well as tracking, I understood "overprint" to be "tracking" (that is what the word made me think it was - the text overprints its area to hide the possible white gaps due to inaccurate registration). That made me use "overprint" for everything initially! For people using this for a long time, the term "overprint" may look OK, for someone new (like I was) the term felt it meant tracking.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Oct 16, 2013 Oct 16, 2013

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I understood "overprint" to be "tracking" (that is what the word made me think it was - the text overprints its area to hide the possible white gaps due to inaccurate registration).

Do you mean trapping? In modern print workflows trapping is handled at output either by third party software or via InDesign's trapping presets—there's no reason to try and set manual traps. You can set overprints, but printers often will ignore document overprints because they can get in the way of their trapping at output. The disabling of overprint for white objects is more of a feature than bug.

It's also a good habit to turn on Overprint or Separation Preview which accurately softproofs color conversions and overprint objects.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Advisor ,
Oct 16, 2013 Oct 16, 2013

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Rob Day wrote:

It's also a good habit to turn on Overprint or Separation Preview which accurately softproofs color conversions and overprint objects.

In addition to what Rob has suggested, I would set up a print profile for your work that checks for common issues such as locked/restricted typefaces and overprint. You can do this by clicking at the bottom of the page (might show a green/red dot with *errors) and select "Define Profiles". You can then create a profile to your requirements and ask it to check for Overprint of white (see screenshot). With this profile, it will show you 'live' at the bottom (green/red dot) whether anything is needing attention.

InD_PrintProfileOverprint.PNG

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Oct 17, 2013 Oct 17, 2013

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

A better way to provide the flexibility you want would be to use Paragraph styles and Character styles for all of your formatting. That way, you can globally change not only the color, but all of your text attributes for each style with one easy move.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Explorer ,
Oct 20, 2013 Oct 20, 2013

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

@Rob Day, yes I meant trapping (not tracking! but I dont see a way to correct/edit my earlier comment). Hope it does not confuse other readers, and they dicover or figure out.)

@SRiegel, yes I had invested effort and time in setting up para and chr styles, and even tried to re-define the issue using the style. But it seemed the color was still a local attribute somehow. Style cascade issue I think, where the local property was overriding the style. Thus I had to clear individual formatting everywhere and ensure I only had styles.

But I also discovered an indesign plugin that could have helped my case (Note: I have not tried this plugin as yet). http://indesignsecrets.com/resources/plug-ins-and-scripts has a "Preserve Local Formatting" at the end. This promises to create character styles and apply them. This could have eased my effort. Then my next question would have been how to combine styles or select text with say two different styles and apply another third style... Ok. This is deviating from the topic (perhaps needs a sepearate post).

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Oct 16, 2013 Oct 16, 2013

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

When you make a new CMYK swatch with 0 values (0|0|0|0) it is set to knockout and the Overprint attribute is not available, which makes sense because in process printing if a white object doesn't knock out it doesn't print—it's hard to think of a case where you would want process white to overprint.

You can start with a non-white mix, set it to Overprint then change the mix to 0|0|0|0 and it will remain as overprint with the Overprint attribute grayed out. So yes, if you start with a non-white CMYK mix and edit its values to white you could force it to overprint (not print). You can use your solution to change the overprint setting, or make the swatch non-white, uncheck Overprint, and set the color back to white.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Explorer ,
Dec 04, 2013 Dec 04, 2013

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I believe that this IS a bug.  I am a long-time InDesign user and pretty much know what I'm doing.  I was working on a doc that I have used successfully in past versions of INDD - now open in CC - just to make a few minor changes.  When I saved my production PDF, I found that one of my paragraph styles with type set to Paper was not appearing.  Looked at the style and overprint was NOT checked, yet in the Attributes pane, overprint was ticked.  No explanation for this.  To fix, I simply changed the type color in the paragraph style to another color and overprint was mysteriously checked (though it had not been checked when the color was set to Paper).  I unchecked overprint and changed the color back to Paper and my type appeared. THAT is a bug!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Dec 04, 2013 Dec 04, 2013

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

It's difficult, but not impossible, to get paper set to overprint in ID. Did you have any effects applied to the text at any point?

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Dec 04, 2013 Dec 04, 2013

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Just curious, how? I can get a white swatch to overprint but not the default [Paper]

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Dec 04, 2013 Dec 04, 2013

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Perhaps I mispoke and it's only with a swatch defined as 0,0,0,0, and honestly I don't remeber how it was done, just thatI've seen it, and it involved some sort of effect. I'm presuming here that the common problem -- an overprint imported from Illustrator where it's relatively easy to set -- is not in play.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Jun 21, 2017 Jun 21, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I'm having a similar problem, except the text in question (in a table) is viewable when I have selected Overprint Preview from the View menu, but not when that option is deselected. Is there a similar fix for this issue?

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Jun 21, 2017 Jun 21, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

LATEST

That would happen if you uncheck Print Layer from the layer's Layer Options dialog. A layer with printing turned off will be in italics in the Layers panel.

If that doesn't work start a new thread this one is 4 years old.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines