Expert: Ken Black - 10/30/2008

Question
Hi there!

I'm a Graphic Communication Student working as a Designer. I'm having an issue with a few different files created in InDesign. With certain files, some images have a sort of ghosting effect around them that occurs when printing on our office desktop printer. It looks like there is a transparent box around them, and seems to be the size of the image's background area. I haven't been able to come to many conclusions as it has happened with illustrator files that have been placed or dragged into InDesign, text that was made into outlines, and psd images, but not always with those file types and/or methods of placement. I've noticed that sometimes it doesn't happen if we print directly from InDesign, and only happens when we print from the PDF - but other times it happens from both PDF's ad InDesign. Any clues as to what this could be? We are worried that this will occur when we sent the file to print. Hopefully I have been able to explain the situation correctly and I didn't confuse you. :) Thanks so very much for your time and hope to hear back from you soon.

Answer
Hi Nisse,

My first assumption is that it is your printer, especially if you cannot see this on screen. It sounds like the printer is trying to trap your document, or has difficulty printing between vector and raster graphics, or something along those lines.

You should be able to have your printer do a preflight and look at your files prior to processing for print. They should be able to tell you if it is something in your files or not.

Thanks,

Ken Black

www.bestprintingonline.com