Topic awaiting preservation: invisible on screen but not when printing

I'll preface this plea for help with the obligatory newb warning: I've no idea what I'm doing, just got Illustrator yesterday

Illustrator CS, I've built a file chock full of vector stuffs, then I decide to insert a photograph, so I bring that into Photoshop, remove the background, convert the color mode to CMYK and use curves to brighten it up a bit, then save. Then I open that PSD in Illustrator and drag the image over into the AI file I'm workng on, perfect fit, I nudge it a wee bit bigger, less than a tenth of it's original size, and add a drop shadow filtter.

It looks great fine and dandy onscreen but when I print it on a Canon desktop printer (just kinda proofing, no idea what final output will be on), the whole "rectangle" of the oringal raster file's size shows where onscreen it was invisible. Looks like there was actually background set to a csreen blending mode or something.

Here's a scan of the print to check out if I'm only confusing you.

Hep?

It sounds like your trasparency flatting setting are set too low. Try adjusting it to medium or high [Edit--> Transparancy Presets] or [Print Dialog--> Advanced Settings] see if that solves the problem.

Also when printing to a non-postscript printer such as your Canon Inkjet printer, you should be checking the "Print As Bitmap" Box, located in the Print-->Advanced dialog. Checking print as bitmap causes Adobe Illustrator to pre-process the pages as if it's a Postscript RIP and then fowarding the resulting bitmap data to the printer. This slows the printing process but more features will print properly.

J. Stuart J.

whoosh, most of that went straight over my head man but I did find the transparency bit earlier, didn't wanna reply to my own thread yet. Wanted a chance to suck you in Prepared to be bothered!

Thanks a ton J.



edit: thread's gone haywire, tryin to right it

[This message has been edited by JKMabry (edited 01-14-2004).]

well !@#$. I've been messing with this a bit and cannot get the problem to go away unless I print from Photoshop. Printing from Illustrator or InDesign shows the overlay.

What's the best way to insert raster images into an Illustrator document? I've just opened the PSD with illustrator and dragged the appropriate layer over and I "placed" a layer via File>Place - they appear to do the same thing to me.

I'd like to know what I'm doing wrong, what's going on, how to fix it. It's no sweat to print this from Photoshop but it bothers me to no end to not know what the problem is. I'd like to learn a bit about print design so I don't have to rely on printers to clean up after me, if they even will.

Did you try to print as pdf?
Might well do the trick and if those 'messy' printers need to clean up after you they would like a well made pdf.

~Thinks about printers and liquid ink and cleanin.... shrudders~

__________________________________________
"Art has to be forgotten. Beauty must be realized."
Piet Mondriaan

you're going about it right, placing a PSD (and clicking the "link" option so you can auto-update if you change something in ps) is your best bet.

also, i'm a bit confused with exactly how your psd and illustrator files fit together.you nudged the psd up in size but it sounds like the original border of the psd is showing bigger? doesn't quite make sense, may just be cause its late in the day if you want to save it out as an ill 8 file and mail it to me i can check it out later on tonight.

chris


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