Alternatives to transparancy

Legacy Intaglio
1

I’ve known that in times past, Postscript hasn’t easily been able to deal with gradients and transparency. I’ve been experimenting with some effects, and what I find is that if I use my preferred route (export as EPS and then compile as PDF by Acrobat) then the sections with transparent objects get rasterised, not what I want at all.

If I export from Intaglio as PDF, the vectors and their effects are preserved, but this route mangles all the colours, so my carefully set up CMYK shades go out the window (plus my PC owning colleagues sometimes have trouple with PDF files created like this).

Any suggestions for more eps friendly ways of achieving the following effects? Preferably ones that will not take me an hour to do!

Notes: the text effects (look at Piccadilly Circus) have been created by cloning the text to a new layer underneath the text layer, and giving a 6pt stroke to the letters, set to 0C0M0Y0K (white) and 75% transparency. The river effect has been created by cloning the relevant stretch of river to a new layer above the Underground lines, and setting it to 60% transparent.

The river effects I can do by converting strokes to outlines and then combining river and line to give me an object the shape of where the line crosses the river and setting this to a new colout. This will take me an hour to do!

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2

Max hi,

On 5 Nov 2008, at 11:14, Max Roberts wrote:

http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~mjr/underground/GeoDiag_Pinch.tiff

your url gives me the server message Object not found!

all the best
Julus

http://juliuspaintings.co.uk

3

Sorry, I set up the address incorrectly, use this address:

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4

Max hi
On 5 Nov 2008, at 11:14, Max Roberts wrote:

I’ve known that in times past, Postscript hasn’t easily been able to
deal with gradients and transparency. I’ve been experimenting with
some effects, and what I find is that if I use my preferred route
(export as EPS and then compile as PDF by Acrobat) then the sections
with transparent objects get rasterised, not what I want at all.

If I export from Intaglio as PDF, the vectors and their effects are
preserved, but this route mangles all the colours, so my carefully
set up CMYK shades go out the window (plus my PC owning colleagues
sometimes have trouple with PDF files created like this).
I’m not sure if I fully understand the problem but I played around
some and possibly the alpha channel experience using Graphic Converter
might be of interest.

I created a drawing made from three intersecting paths in bue, red and
brown of varying transparency.
I chose the CMYK default colour space.
I saved as PDF.
When I read the file anew and converted to editable pdf all looked
fine except that the colour space reverted to RGB.

I went back to the original intaglio file.
Drew another path and applied the gradient.
I could not change it’s opacity: though the numbers represented by the
slider changed the slider did not move and the opacity of the stroke
remained the same.

I copied the gradient stroke and went into GraphicConverter.
http://www.lemkesoft.com/

I pasted into the Alpha Channel.
This now gave me a stroke of varying transparency though the colour is
all white (I have not looked to do more with this).
I cropped the image to leave me with the alpha channel part (where i
did the paste).
Selected all and copied and went back into intaglio and pasted.
The different degrees of transparency remained.

I saved as PDF.
Opened the pdf file in intaglio.
The gradient on the original gradient stroke is reversed!
However, the gradient of the “alpha channeled stroke” is as before.
The whole thing decomposes nicely when converted to editable pdf.
Intaglio 3.0.1 on 10.5.5 (must set default intaglio app to the
recently updated intaglio)

Here are the files
http://juliuspaintings.co.uk/intaglio/theOriginal.intaglio

http://juliuspaintings.co.uk/intaglio/theConverted.pdf

Any suggestions for more eps friendly ways of achieving the
following effects? Preferably ones that will not take me an hour to
do!

Unfortunately, this service is no longer available | University of Essex

Notes: the text effects (look at Piccadilly Circus) have been
created by cloning the text to a new layer underneath the text
layer, and giving a 6pt stroke to the letters, set to 0C0M0Y0K
(white) and 75% transparency. The river effect has been created by
cloning the relevant stretch of river to a new layer above the
Underground lines, and setting it to 60% transparent.

The river effects I can do by converting strokes to outlines and
then combining river and line to give me an object the shape of
where the line crosses the river and setting this to a new colout.
This will take me an hour to do!
No comprendo. Are you speaking of the, for instance, thin
parallelogram shape of the gray tube line where crossed by river above
the word westiminster?

Hope preceding re alpha is useful?

Can I ask why you are working in CMYK?
I have the impression cmyk is a printing colour space but these days
we can work in almost anything.

To get the colours right I think one needs to start by calibrating
one’s screen properly.
There are then printer calibration programs one can employ to ensure
one is getting reasonable translation of the stored data into physical
ink, e.g. google “printer calibration”. But starting with a properly
calibrated screen is I think the most important since after that one
can fiddle with the printer settings until one gets roughly what one
wants. This is assuming one’s printer software permits it!! Important
to remember in all these processes is that each transformation looses
information and that different media give different results so an
image on the screen will never translate precisely into print. (Where
I once worked one of my colleagues was a world authority on colour. It
is a billion, trillion dollar business, and the process of getting
from drawing board to printed object is just one of continual image
degradation. And the business of colour perception is just incredible)

I had for the past few years been looking for a printing shop able to
reproduce my Bella’s Dream.
http://juliuspaintings.co.uk/cgi-bin/paint_css/bella/bellasDream.pl

My problem was that every one I gave it to would produce a print as
dead and lifeless as could be. They were simply unable to provide the
vivid colours.
One of the reasons was that they insisted on converting everything to
CMK and that had the immediate effect, visible on screen of deadening
the colours particularily the red.
I have come to the conclusion that the vast majority of those using
modern printing technology have very little idea of how to use it
properly. As well as that their main business is printing cheap
brochures and posters and no one outside the art world seems that
bothered about quality anymore so it’s a don’t care culture and
printing skills are going for a burton.
A friend of mine finally found a promising print shop in london that
allowed one to fiddle with the colours oneself.

We went there to print stuff because I was sure that with a bit of
work I could get a satisfactory result.
But these people were real pros and I had very little to do. They got
interested in the problem!!!
The people in london did not insist on converting to cmyk and gave
great support to finding the right colour balance - there’s nothing
like working with someone who really knows their stuff!
We adjusted everything appropriately in photoshop and printed in rgb
and although different media (digital c-print and I think it was the
epson 9800 on really nice paper) gave different results the vivacity
of colour survived. No, not just survived: Was Fantastic!

Though I have no immediate way of comparing, the map you’re producing
looks like a perfect facsimile of the original and looks beautiful.

all the best
Julius

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5

Thanks for giving this a go, I will look into Alpha, its not something I have thought about much before. Good thing I have a paid-up copy of Graphic Convertor.

Looked at you web page. Very impressive paintings. About as different from what I do as possible!

There are different ways of creating a pdf file, some are more output friendly than others. Acrobat is generally preferred because it is less likely to cause nasty surprises. Here are three I created earlier:

As you can see, you get very different outcomes when you try to edit them. The eps to pdf route has converted the transparency effect into a bitmap. Ugh.

Why do I work in CMYK? Here is the answer:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/corporate/media/designstandards/assets/downloads/tfl/ColourStandardsIssue02.pdf

So, I know what the colours need to be in advance, and I just type them into the CMYK sliders. If I don’t I prefer to match a colour against a 4-colour process chart rather than against a screen. No document I work on has more than about 15 colours on it. In theory, that should reduce the number of nasty surprises. Better for me to hand CMYK encoded files to a printer rather than (and it has happened to me too, with yellows turning to green, and getting into press) a CMYK conversion deadening all the colours.

Glad you like the map. This is turning into a career for me. There is some pretty mad stuff on my hard disk. You can see examples at places like this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ipm/2007/11/get_ahead_get_a_map_updated.shtml

I’m hoping to do a book charting my explorations, but TfL is being very cagey about discussing this with me.

All the best,

Max

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6

Wow Max
well I never!
I’ve talked to the chap who does the map for the london underground!!!
Brilliant!
And I absolutely adore that organic amoeba like all swirls and twirls
map of yours.
It is so Ionic and so itself and so unique.
Where most cities across the world produce a clone of the original
you’ve gone and made something absolutely original and so alive!
It is fantastic.
What an imagination. What audacity! Bravo. Bravo.

I can’t now so i’ll look at the rest of your email later.
Very best wishes
and thanks for letting me see it.
Julius

On 5 Nov 2008, at 14:22, Max Roberts wrote:

Thanks for giving this a go, I will look into Alpha, its not
something I have thought about much before. Good thing I have a paid-
up copy of Graphic Convertor.

Looked at you web page. Very impressive paintings. About as
different from what I do as possible!

There are different ways of creating a pdf file, some are more
output friendly than others. Acrobat is generally preferred because
it is less likely to cause nasty surprises. Here are three I created
earlier:

Unfortunately, this service is no longer available | University of Essex
Unfortunately, this service is no longer available | University of Essex
Unfortunately, this service is no longer available | University of Essex

As you can see, you get very different outcomes when you try to edit
them. The eps to pdf route has converted the transparency effect
into a bitmap. Ugh.

Why do I work in CMYK? Here is the answer:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/corporate/media/designstandards/assets/downloads/tfl/ColourStandardsIssue02.pdf

So, I know what the colours need to be in advance, and I just type
them into the CMYK sliders. If I don’t I prefer to match a colour
against a 4-colour process chart rather than against a screen. No
document I work on has more than about 15 colours on it. In theory,
that should reduce the number of nasty surprises. Better for me to
hand CMYK encoded files to a printer rather than (and it has
happened to me too, with yellows turning to green, and getting into
press) a CMYK conversion deadening all the colours.

Glad you like the map. This is turning into a career for me. There
is some pretty mad stuff on my hard disk. You can see examples at
places like this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ipm/2007/11/get_ahead_get_a_map_updated.shtml

I’m hoping to do a book charting my explorations, but TfL is being
very cagey about discussing this with me.

All the best,

Max

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7

Repro is a real bag of worms. EPS/PS and Acrobat are all Adobe formats, which don’t always play nicely with Apple software.

Adobe apps apparently use their own graphics and printing engines, ignoring OSX’ built in services, but they should be able to read Intaglio PDFs. My old version of Illustrator (v6) doesn’t recognise Intaglio EPS files, but Intaglio PDF/EPS files can be opened in PStill (by Stone Software) and converted. PStill generates an EPS that can be opened and edited in Illustrator. Its Options dialogue box includes a checkbox ‘Use Transparency from Input PDF’.

Your colour shifting problem could be caused by an incorrect colour space.

Go to the Layout menu and select ‘Color Space’. In the dialogue box that appears, click the CMYK button and choose ‘Photoshop 4 Default CMYK’.

Note: as I recall, Photoshop 5’s colour handling was changed to improve the look of images on Windows machines. This upset a lot of Mac users and output bureaux, who had set up their machines to Mac Photoshop 4 specification. Your printer should be able to advise if this is still an issue.

Concerning alpha channel masks, I’m working on a web site and wanted a bitmap to be cut out. The traditional way of doing this is to create the mask in Photoshop, but the same thing can be done in Intaglio.

Select the Paths tool and draw a closed path around the part of the bitmap that is to be retained. Fill the path with black.
Group the image and path.
Open the ‘Group’ palette and select ‘Standard’. The area outside the path is hidden and transparent. The area within the drawn shape (the mask) is visible.
Save as a PNG. The masked image displays correctly in Safari.

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