How transparency works

Quark’s press briefing documentation provides this excellent overview of how transparency typically works.

“There is a lot of confusion and debate in the marketplace about the best way to implement transparency, when transparency should be ‘flattened’ and whether transparency is supported by the various Adobe PostScript raster image processors (RIPs) that drive modern printing technology. Quark believes that some of this confusion stems from the fact that when transparency was first introduced to Adobe InDesign in 2002, there were several issues that caused output problems among service providers.”

“Changing the opacity of objects in a PostScript environment has always been tricky and under certain circumstances, it is still difficult to reliably predict the outcome. This is mainly the result of the process of ‘flattening’ images — a step in which overlapping objects (that include at least one transparent layer) are compressed into single objects.”

Invisible ink

If you’ll excuse my enthusiasm, the next feature set I am about to reference is a personal headache for me and I think Quark has tackled the issue very well indeed.

Basically, interface improvements in QuarkXPress 7 make it easier for users to insert special characters without looking up keyboard commands or resorting to third-party software. Now, Invisibles (View menu) displays the full range of invisible characters, including discretionary hyphens, en spaces and non-breaking spaces. In addition, invisible characters scale according to the point size and view percentage. As a result, the dot shown for a space looks different at 10 points than it does at 60 points and it looks different at 100% than it does at 500%.

Either I have an overly developed need to insert special characters, or I just seem to be plagued with en space problems – either way, I am a happy man.

The QuarkVista XTensions software (included first with QuarkXPress 6.5) adds industrial strength image-editing effects to QuarkXPress. Users can correct images with adjustments to brightness/contrast, colour balance and hue/saturation. Special effects can be applied with filters such as Gaussian blur and unsharp mask. By changing effects and adjustments directly on the page, QuarkVista saves time and puts creative experimentation within easy reach.