InDesign special effects causing extra bounding boxes

[Clobberella]

Hello,

I have some InDesign documents that are using Drop Shadow and/or Bevel and Emboss special effects. I am exporting these documents into High Res PDFs. We are getting MANY unnecessary bounding boxes. I would like to reduce or eliminate these bounding boxes, we are getting feedback from our prepress people that this is problematice at press.

Any ideas please? Thank you!

 

[irishgrizzly]

You could do the templates in illustrator and rasterize them before you import them into indesign. Leave the text in indesign so it's stays crisp.

 

[btbrossard]

That's really not many boxes.

What sort of rip/refine are the prepress people using? Just about any modern rip or refine should handle that amount of boxes without any problem, even if stepped up enough times to fill a 40" or 64" press sheet.

Like the other poster said, the only way to eliminate the number of boxes is to rasterize some of the art in Illustrator or the like. Each vector item is going to make it's own box when viewing wireframe, so to cut down on those boxes, you have to combine the elements.

When you say "problematic at press," is the problem with the rip choking on the files or is it fitting of the content at press due to poor trap/registration?

 

[PrePressAcrobat]

I would agree that any modern RIP should handle the files with no problem.
(especially, noting the files were created as long ago as 1998)
However - I you need to dumb the files down even more
I would export to PDF 1.3 - even with your high rez settings
Or write PostScript and distill to any level PDF.
I would create a custom Transparency Flattener preset
that matches the resolution of my platesetter (i.e. = 2540dpi)
to eliminate variations in line and type width changes at the edges of bounding boxes.

MSD

 

[Clobberella]

Thank you for these suggestions. I will certainly start experimenting and give them a shot. Fingers crossed!

 

[macuser453787]

Thank you for these suggestions. I will certainly start experimenting and give them a shot.

FWIW I've found that setting the raster/vector balance to 100 is always a good thing (ESPECIALLY anytime that any vector elements and transparency bounding boxes overlap each other). I've also found that sometimes, more recent PDF versions are better for eliminating visible edges where the PDF splices objects and images into chunks (not sure if that's part of the issue you were seeing on press or not...?).

If all else fails, rasterize all the necessary elements in Photoshop at extremely high resolution (at least 1200 dpi), place the new composite image in your layout and rip it at full res. At higher line screens (200 lpi or above), anti-aliasing shouldn't be a visible issue. Of course I don't recommend doing this if spot seps are needed in the rasterized areas - if that were the case it would be better to find an easier workaround IMO.