Preparing the Wedding Album for Print
When preparing the Wedding Album for Print in ADOBE InDesign I included many small picture details that I had created on transparent layers in ADOBE Photoshop. When checking these pages and spreads in PDF format before handing the project over to the printers, I discovered some fine transparency lines – on just a few pages of many – and my long and painful odyssey into how to remove fine white transparency lines on a PDF (…or in InDesign or wherever…) started!
Of course, I checked all my pages and layers in ADOBE InDesign first – and there were absolutely no errors.
The joke was, that whenever I moved a picture frame to a different position, and all showed 100% in the Preview or Presentation mode, all was perfect! But when I checked it in the PDF (Acrobat Pro) – here were the fine lines again! And – the weirdest of all: they had not moved! Then they no longer showed on one PDF – hallelujah! – but came back on another! And then various PDFs did not show the same results either plus, some of the pictures looked like sliced up into pieces of a mosaic! It was something to go crazy and I only give you the short version here!
I consulted the online FAQ’s of the printer, and while it put me on the correct path by directing me to change the settings in Acrobat Pro (recommendation: untick “Smooth Line Art” as per picture here, found under > Edit > Preferences > Page Display on your PDF), this did not help then as I could not untick this in my version! On top of it, their fine text said that IF these fine lines showed in the submitted PDF, they would print! That was just not acceptable for me; everything was to be as precise and perfect as prepared – no errors, no warnings!
However, Blurb has a brilliant customer service and responded promptly to my request (with attached screenshots), saying those lines should not show and asking me to send them the entire PDF to look into …
Preparing the Wedding Album for Print
Once I had gone to all those lengths to find an answer as to how to remove fine white transparency lines on a PDF, I discussed the distressing issue with Yorgo. We looked into basically everything once again: there had to be a way!
And – finally – there was!
Here’s the short solution to help you save hours of research and tons of hairs turning grey and falling out: the corrected settings in my PDF for printed matter as per above when preparing the wedding album for print:
The big EUREKA was: under rendering, untick “Use page cache”.
Unticking “Smooth line art” had no influence on the above problem at all, although I managed to untick it by first unticking “Use 2D graphics acceleration”.
So I had smelled the rat – the cache – all the time, but I did not know where to find it! It’s all about basics… and we never stop learning! Thank heavens – problem solved!
I could upload the book (PDF) for print and am looking forward to receive a stunning and elegant Wedding Book around the 19th February, 2013!
Of course, in our elegant wedding websites we basically paint with light (RGB). This cannot be compared with nor expected in any printed matter, where we paint with colours (CMYK). However, to make the demanding customer happy, I did my best by being creative in an unusual way (that demanded lots of delicate handwork)… while keeping the chosen digital photos from my simple NIKON Coolpix P90 as pure and untouched as possible. We will see…!
