Transparent GIFs
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- Atkinson
I'm having a second edition of some books made and these little bastards have started to print with a grey background. No doubt it's my fault but what have I done wrong? Transparent gifs made in PS placed over an image in Indesign, exported as PDF and sent to print.
You can see more evidently on one, not so much on the other and on the third it looks fine. Any ideas?
- fyoucher10
Check to make sure those areas are actually fully transparent first.
You might be trying to delete a background in something but it's not completely making those background areas fully transparent.
- Atkinson0
it is totally transparent
- Gnash0
using gifs on a print job is your first mistake. save them as psd with an background layer.
- i_monk0
Make sure the GIF (shouldn't it be a PSD?) is the same colour profile as the image below it, and the picture box in the layout doesn't have any sort of effects or attributes attached to it.
- fyoucher10
If you're talking about CRB in the photo then it' because you're exporting transparency but it's still being matted against another color. Those are the areas of the image that are semi-transparent (areas where anti-aliasing is happening). Use a PNG / TIFF instead.
- i.e. GIF's are 8-bit, for alpha transparency you need 24-bitfyoucher1
- Atkinson0
ok, so I'll try a PSD with an empty BG. I didn't realise you shouldn't print gifs. Thanks all.
- Gnash0
make sure it's cmyk - as your base image should be. If the CRB is 100%K then you can alternatively save it as greyscale. In Indesign set the CRB image to "mulltiply" in the effects options
- Atkinson0
Yes, BG is grey as is logo, set logo to multiply and the same is happening, just the logo is darker
- Gnash0
that's odd. I see in the image above that the bounding box around the CRB logo just fits image - which is how it should be.
this shouldn't be affecting the rest of the background. something else must be causing it.
- i_monk0
Other options – use a vector version of the logo instead of an image, put the logo on a separate layer, umm... make sure everything is CMYK...
Are you printing directly, or ripping a PDF first? Check your output/ink management settings.
- Gnash0
that makes sense, actually. There are a number of options under "view" in InDesign like "Proof Set Up"- this will simulate dot gain on press and varies based on the profile you choose (Dot gain will darken images depending on the paper and process used to print)
- animatedgif0
This image makes me want to bang my head against a wall.
GIFs are not made for this. And to all the people saying "oh make sure it's CMYK" you also need to brush up on the basics. Why would GIF even support CMYK when it's a format designed for the internet.
Use PSD or TIFF, they both support CMYK and alpha transparencies. GIF only supports 1 bit transparency and RGB.
- Atkinson0
two things,
a] all images here are 100% K, grey scale.
2] there are no gifs in this image, just PSD
- Gnash0
^ people saying "use CMYK," are essentially saying "don't use gifs".
- doesnotexist0
make that vector
- hans_glib0
i know it's old skool and all that, but in the days before dtp apps could deal with transparency you would have to apply the logo onto the image in photoshop and then import that single file. Apart from the fiddling to get the logo into the right position and the right size on the image (not that hard) doing this would avoid all these problems you are having.
as an aside, I'm not too sure what's to be gained with having a textured logo on an image, as it carries the danger of making the logo looking as if has printed badly, but that's by the by.