Adobe InDesign - Manual (Page 651)

Flattening transparent artwork
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Note:
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About flattening
About transparency flattener presets
Apply a flattener preset for output
Create or edit a transparency flattener preset
Export and import a custom transparency flattener preset
Rename or delete a custom transparency flattener preset
Flatten an individual spread
Ignore the flattener preset on an individual spread
Transparency Flattener options
Preview which areas of artwork will be flattened
Refresh the preview in the Flattener Preview panel
Best practices when creating transparency
About flattening
If your document or artwork contains transparency, to be output it usually needs to undergo a process called flattening. Flattening divides
transparent artwork into vector-based areas and rasterized areas. As artwork becomes more complex (mixing images, vectors, type, spot colors,
overprinting, and so on), so does the flattening and its results.
Flattening may be necessary when you print or when you save or export to other formats that don’t support transparency. To retain transparency
without flattening when you create PDF files, save your file as Adobe PDF 1.4 (Acrobat 5.0) or later.
You can specify flattening settings and then save and apply them as transparency flattener presets. Transparent objects are flattened according to
the settings in the selected flattener preset.
Transparency flattening cannot be undone after the file is saved.
Overlapping art is divided when flattened.
For more information on transparency output issues, see the Print Service Provider Resources page of the Adobe Solutions Network (ASN)
(English only), available on the
Adobe website .
About transparency flattener presets
If you regularly print or export documents that contain transparency, you can automate the flattening process by saving flattening settings in a
transparency flattener preset. You can then apply these settings for print output as well as for saving and exporting files to PDF 1.3 (Acrobat 4.0)
and EPS and PostScript formats. In addition, in Illustrator you can apply them when saving files to earlier versions of Illustrator or when copying to
the clipboard; in Acrobat, you can also apply them when optimizing PDFs.
These settings also control how flattening occurs when you export to formats that don’t support transparency.
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