{"id":1134,"date":"2013-07-22T16:56:27","date_gmt":"2013-07-22T23:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/?p=1134"},"modified":"2013-09-05T03:29:09","modified_gmt":"2013-09-05T10:29:09","slug":"a-big-sur-solution-to-overprint-errors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/?p=1134","title":{"rendered":"A Big Sur solution to overprint errors"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Blognosticator<\/a><\/p>\n

As I was winding south from Big Sur last Friday, where I had spent the day making a GigaPan image of the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Beach, my phone rang (I had been in a No Service area for over six hours!). I pulled over to take the call, of course.<\/p>\n

It was my wife (a graphic designer) calling to ask about a problem she was having with a logo that had been drawn by a local ad agency in Adobe Illustrator. It was strange, she said. The logo appeared in the ad on her screen, and it appeared in the PDF file she created of a page with the ad placed in it.<\/p>\n

\"Acrobat<\/a><\/p>\n

But, the lettering of the logo disappeared when she proofed it on our laser printer. It was driving her crazy.<\/p>\n

\"Acrobat<\/a><\/p>\n

As I passed Piedras Blancas Lighthouse, I tried to get back into my prepress frame of mind. I scoured my memory banks for similar problems. I had a vague notion that I had encountered an Illustrator file once that had a disappearing element in it. What on earth caused it?<\/p>\n

With the surf hitting the rocks to my right, and with 45 miles still to go before I could be there to dissect the problem, I thumbed through my brain-index, looking for a reference, but I came up blank.<\/p>\n

I was listening to Beethoven\u2019s Emperor Concerto<\/em> on my car stereo, and was enjoying the second movement with its quiet pizzicato cello part when it hit me. It was probably something having to do with overprint. I accelerated, and made my way south through Cayucos and Morro Bay, excited by the idea of being the knock-out knight in shining armor who saves the day for my damsel-in-distress.<\/p>\n

(You have to forgive a guy his fantasies.)<\/p>\n

If, when drawing something white (0,0,0,0 CMYK) in Illustrator, you set that object to overprint, Illustrator will interrupt you with a warning saying that this won\u2019t work, unless it\u2019s part of a transparency effect. Most of us treat these warnings as so much \u201cblah, blah, blah\u201d and click on through. But, this is one to which you should pay attention.<\/p>\n

\"Overprint<\/a><\/p>\n

Overprinting colors works fine \u2013 when there are colors to overprint \u2013 for example, overprinting yellow on top of cyan will create a solid green in the final printing. But overprinting white creates nothing \u2013 zilch.<\/p>\n

Overprinting white under or over a color will cause that color to overprint it,<\/em> and you will see only the other color. It\u2019s a strange concept, but it\u2019s valid. White overprinting doesn\u2019t work (unless you\u2019re printing white ink on top of something).<\/p>\n

What the agency wanted, of course, was a white knock-out from the color or image under the logo. And, with any color other than white, the overprint would have worked.<\/p>\n

\"Illustrator<\/a><\/p>\n

The best approach to this is to select Overprint Preview<\/em> in Illustrator (above) to see the effect of your overprints. If something disappears from the screen when you choose it, you\u2019ve got a problem. If colors change, then you have overprint.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to fix. Just select the erroneously assigned white overprint, and uncheck the Overprint checkbox in the Attributes<\/em> menu (below). The overprint will go away, and knock-out will be done instead.<\/p>\n

\"Overprint<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I was winding south from Big Sur last Friday, where I had spent the day making a GigaPan image of the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Beach, my phone rang (I had been in a No Service area for over … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,24,25],"tags":[63,64,66,65],"class_list":["post-1134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mistakes-you-can-avoid","category-printing-and-printing-processes","category-software-2","tag-blognosticator","tag-brian-lawler","tag-overprint","tag-overprint-error"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1134"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1214,"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134\/revisions\/1214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}