Transparency limitations

Transparency and feathering

If the fill color of an object is feathered, such object cannot become transparent.

Color of transparent objects

•Fill color of transparent objects must be pure. Color gradient is supported only if another transparent object is above and the object itself is opaque.

Transparency and feathering

If the fill color of an object is feathered, such object cannot become transparent.

Transparent objects and layers

•Objects on a master layer cannot be transparent.

•As for dynamic engrave, objects can be transparent only above other objects on the same layer. A transparent object must not overlap with objects in other layers below it.

Transparency on text

•To apply transparency on text, text has to be flowing in a graphic text frame, or it has to be converted to outlines.

Transparent objects on top of images

Postscript printing related limitations

•Images to be placed below transparent objects must be either directly imported. OPI-ed images below transparent objects are not supported in Postscript printing - will cause an error.

•For Postscript printing, images must be JPEG/TIFF 24bit color and the "To Gray" Fred4 option can not be mixed with transparency. This does not apply on direct PDF printing.

•For Postscript printing, transparency won't work above grayscale or monochromatic images. If you convert such images into 24-bit color space (e.g. in Photoshop, on the Image menu, point to Mode, and then select either RGB color or CMYK color), the side effect is that such images are then printed on all color plates (C,M,Y, and K).

•For Postscript printing, printing transparency on top of images will not work if variant printing is enabled (The use of variants for printing is enabled on the system level by creating a 'UseVariantPrint' entry in the 'General' section of ConfigTable with value '1'. If this entry is absent or its value is '0' the use of variant for printing is disabled).

Postscript and direct PDF printing related limitations

•On-screen display of transparency above images will not work or will give weird results if there's no color profile assigned to color list (Options > Colors > Color profile). If you have Fred4 open and you assigned the color profile only now, restart Fred4 to make transparency correctly displayed.

PDF printing related limitations

•On-screen display of transparency above images that are grayscale or monochromatic, or EPS with clipping path will not work or will give weird results, but it will print ok.