Dallas InDesign User Group

Meeting Notes Archive

February 19, 2008

The IDUG Dallas Chapter had a great start to 2008. Responding to feedback from our members, we kicked off the year with our first daytime meeting. Attendance exceeded our best meeting of 2007, and the room was filled to capacity. I'm happy to report there were no catering leftovers -- another first for the Dallas chapter. It was great to see familiar faces along with new attendees.

Lisa Niday, a.k.a. "The High Priestess of Print," flew in from Colorado to educate members about the best practices using transparency with Adobe products. In the first of a two-part series, Lisa delivered more than just a "show me" presentation on InDesign techniques. She discussed how the Creative Suite products work together, and the benefits of using live transparency options versus flattened output.

Some highlights from the presentation:

1. Transparency in InDesign includes Opacity, Feather & Drop Shadow Effects, Blend Modes, and native transparency from other Adobe applications.

2. Flattening is the process where overlapping or intersecting objects in a transparent group are converted to opaque elements that appear the same as the original.

3. Objects will be flattened if they are the source of transparency or interact with the transparency.

4. Adobe applications incorporate "live" transparency — which can be edited. File formats such as EPS & TIFF would be considered "flattened" transparency, which cannot be edited. PDFs created from Distiller, and PDF version 1.3 (Acrobat 4) are also considered flattened transparency.

5. Use the Flattener Preview available in Illustrator, InDesign & Acrobat to check files for transparency issues.

Transparency in Creative Suite 3
Lisa's highly sought-after presentation is available here.
Download [PDF: 1.2 MB]  

Humbly serving as your IDUG Chapter Representative,
– A.J. Wood.

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