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1. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
BobLevine Aug 11, 2011 12:43 PM (in response to L Hickle)First things first. Update InDesign 7.0.4.
Bob
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2. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
L Hickle Aug 11, 2011 1:04 PM (in response to BobLevine)Okay, I've just finished updating InDesign. I tried exporting a chapter head page to PDF, and got the same result.
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3. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
P Spier Aug 11, 2011 3:00 PM (in response to L Hickle)What format was the image?
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4. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
L Hickle Aug 12, 2011 9:13 AM (in response to P Spier)It was saved as a .tif file. I almost always save my photos in .tif format.
Additional (related) oddness: I have ID CS4 at home, and on a job I am working on there, I have memorial ads. My standard format for those ads was to have photos with feathered edges. Nine times out of 10 they work just fine, but the tenth one won't, and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. I don't think there's anything on the page that should be conflicting with the problem child.
Now I'm getting gunshy about this. Would it be a safer procedure to feather the edges in Photoshop rather than in InDesign? It would be a pain, since I prefer to adjust the final crop in ID, but now I wonder.
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5. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
P Spier Aug 12, 2011 12:08 PM (in response to L Hickle)Seems odd. Are the images layered?
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6. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
troyjack1 Jan 30, 2012 7:03 AM (in response to P Spier)This happens to me all the time, especially in large publications with many photos. Using CS4 6.0.6. The images may be JPG, TIF, layered, unlayered... no rhyme or reason whatsoever. The only similarity is that they are all feathered in InDesign. The odd thing is that other feathered images will export fine, but some random images won't. This happens on multiple computers in our office using CS4. The only workaround we've come up with is feathering them in PS, which is a pain and inefficient. Any help is greatly appreciated.
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7. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
allisonblake Jan 30, 2012 8:14 AM (in response to L Hickle)This happened to a colleague for the first time a few weeks ago.
Mac OS 10.6.8; CS5 (7.0.4)
Tif file (no layers) with feather would not appear when exported to PDF. We ended up removing the feather (which wasn't essential to the design in this case) in order to get the image to appear.
Agree with troyjack1 above that doing the feather in PS to avoid this problem would be a pain and probably close to impossible for me to implement in my department.
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8. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
troyjack1 Jan 30, 2012 8:42 AM (in response to L Hickle)Found this in another thread and it worked for the moment, but seems to also be inefficient, as doing the same thing twice usually is:
Re: Problems when creating pdfs from Indesign CS4
I had last week a similliar case in a German forum. I got the file. I selected the images with the direct selection tool, cut them into the clipboard, deleted the original frame and placed them in place. THis helped.
- Willi Adelberger
The only thing I can think that would be causing this to happen (at least in my case) is that sometimes I'll copy and paste a frame on another page and place a new image in that frame, so that I don't have to adjust the effects from scratch every time I place a new image. The issue seems to be happening to images that I've placed in the copied and pasted frames. Just a hunch though. Hoping to experiment with it a little when I get a chance.
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9. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
John Hawkinson Feb 1, 2012 2:05 AM (in response to troyjack1)Can one of you make available, or post or email me a link to a file that demonstrates this problem? Thanks.
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10. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
eivind80 Feb 1, 2012 5:05 AM (in response to L Hickle)I've experienced this several times too in CS5, and now take extra care before sending PDFs to print.
I've found a workaround that helps in my case:
When exporting the PDF I set it to the "PDF/X-1a:2001" standard, which flattens the transparent effects (like feathering). The images then appear in the PDF.
As the problem tends to affect only certain images/pages with transparent effects I usually export the PDF with normal settings, and then go back and re-export just the affected pages with the "PDF/X-1a:2001" standard activated. I then replace the erroneous pages in the PDF in Acrobat.
I hope this helps, but I know it is not the ideal solution.
If someone has a better fix I'd love to see it.
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11. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
eivind80 Feb 1, 2012 6:35 AM (in response to John Hawkinson)Hi John,
My InDesign files are too big to upload anywhere, but these two screen shots show an example of this problem.
This is how the spread looks in InDesign (link and effect info for right image shown):
... and this is how the exported PDF spread looks (normal "Press Quality" export setting):
As you can see, several, but not all, objects with transparent effects have disappeared.
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12. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
allisonblake Feb 1, 2012 7:16 AM (in response to John Hawkinson)John, Here is a sample file showing one feathered image that has no problems (page 20) and one that disappears at export (page 35). Would love if you found something that is triggering this!
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13. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
ja3754 Feb 1, 2012 7:48 AM (in response to allisonblake)Like elvind80 above, I too have experienced objects disappearing in PDFs exported as "Press Quality".
Exporting as PDF/X-1a was the solution.
Allison: I've just tested your file. Exporting as "Press Quality" results in the p35 image disappearing. Exporting as PDF/X-1a fixes it.
Update: The issue seems related to PDF compatibility: When exporting at "Press Quality" with compatibility changed to Acrobat 4 (PDF 1.3), the image exports successfully.
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14. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
P Spier Feb 1, 2012 7:58 AM (in response to ja3754)Changing the compatibility to to PDF1.3 forces transparency flattening, same as export to X1-a. I'm curious if toggling Tagged PDF makes a difference for any of you. That sometimes fixes odd stuff like this. I'm also curious if any of these PDFs that disappear came from Quark.
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15. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
allisonblake Feb 1, 2012 7:58 AM (in response to ja3754)I opened the apparently blank PDF in Illustrator and looked at the layers and there seem to be clipping paths that are hiding the image. Stripping these away revealed the missing image--with feather intact. Don't know if this helps diagnose what is happening in the transfer from ID to PDF, though.
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16. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
P Spier Feb 1, 2012 8:02 AM (in response to P Spier)Sorry, not sure waht I was thinking there for a minute. Clearly not all of the images showing a problem are placed PDF, so the Quark question is irrelevant. The tagged PDF is not, however, so it would be worth a test. Can't do that here with Alison's file as there are no links.
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17. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
allisonblake Feb 1, 2012 8:15 AM (in response to P Spier)I added the images to the public dropbox folder
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18. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
ja3754 Feb 1, 2012 8:48 AM (in response to allisonblake)I don't think it's the image that is the problem: I replaced the image with my own and it still disappeared on export.
I also created a new box and applied the same feather effect. This exported no problem.
However, when I placed a graphic into the original box, the graphic drops off. It's as if the containing box has become corrupted somehow.
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19. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
P Spier Feb 1, 2012 8:47 AM (in response to allisonblake)Export stalled here the first time I tried, but went OK after a force quit and restart. Toggling tagged PDF didn't change a thing. There appears to be some sort of corruption though. I've tried twice to delete the image on page 35 and replace it, both with the original and the same image after resaving in Photoshop, and both times ID has crashed while I try to adjust the frame size.
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20. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
ja3754 Feb 1, 2012 8:52 AM (in response to P Spier)Yes, I had a couple of crashes during testing. It all points to some corruption somewhere, possibly the graphic box itself. Exporting to IDML doesn't fix it.
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21. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
P Spier Feb 1, 2012 9:01 AM (in response to ja3754)I thought it might be the frame, too, which is why I delted it and was replacing the image, but my crashing happend with the new frame, so either it was corrupt, too (not likely) or there's something else on the page causing the problem.
I don't have the free time to track it down today...
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22. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
John Hawkinson Feb 1, 2012 3:38 PM (in response to allisonblake)allisonblake wrote:
John, Here is a sample file showing one feathered image that has no problems (page 20) and one that disappears at export (page 35). Would love if you found something that is triggering this!
Allison, it appears to me that this occurs in CS5 and not in CS5.5. So it sounds like whatever bug this was is fixed...do you not have 5.5 available?
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23. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
allisonblake Feb 2, 2012 5:40 AM (in response to John Hawkinson)John,
Good to know CS 5.5 fixes this. I do have a license for 5.5 (free upgrade with purchase of CS5 in the wake of the CS5.5 announcement) but as the other 25 or so Macs in the office are on CS5 (ID and InCopy), that knowledge doesn't help too much as there are no plans to upgrade everyone for a while--we tend to skip releases and will likely not get the $$ in the budget until CS7.
Did you happen to test if saving the CS 5.5 file to idml and opening it in CS5 cleared the problem? I'll try that today.
Thank you so much for your trouble shooting efforts!
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24. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
John Hawkinson Feb 2, 2012 6:04 AM (in response to allisonblake)Did you happen to test if saving the CS 5.5 file to idml and opening it in CS5 cleared the problem? I'll try that today.
Thank you so much for your trouble shooting efforts!
Gosh, I didn't really think about that. I didn't think to test it yesterday, but it was handy to do so now. Unfortunately...doesn't seem to work.
I guess I kind of have the feeling there's something about InDesign's feathering machinery that interacts poorly with certain kinds of images on PDF export.
It's probably true that there's some trick we can apply to reduce the liklihood of it. Not really sure...
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25. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
Laubender Feb 2, 2012 9:04 AM (in response to allisonblake)@Allison – I can confirm what you and John found: image does disappear using export to PDF/X-4 2008 in InDesign CS5 (7.0.4), is working in InDesign CS5.5 (7.5.2) using export to PDF/X-4 2010.
Exporting to PDF/X-1a or printing to PostScript and distilling to PDF shows no problem.
However in exported CS5-PDF (PDF/X-4 2008) the image is there, but not visible, packed as XObject in the contents stream of the PDF (which is not unusal); all its meta data is there, XMP information etc. pp. You can see that if you look at "Internal PDF Structure" in Acrobat Pro's flyout menu of the Preflight panel.
No difference if you do export in background or in foreground (via script).
Uwe
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26. Re: CS5 - Graphic with feathered edge disappears when exported to PDF
Laubender Feb 2, 2012 9:26 AM (in response to Laubender)@Allison – just tested with InDesign CS3 and CS4. In both cases the file is missing, if you leave transparency intact when using export to PDF.
Seems to be a very old bug finally fixed in CS5.5.
Uwe







