Drop Shadows Not Printing Correctly

[funzero]

For the past several years I have been using Photoshop to creat graphics with
drop shadows. I recently tried to use them with Publsiher 2003 and instead
of the shadow gently fading to white, there is a shadow with a vivid stopping
point in Publsher when I print. On the screen it looks OK. I must have
somenting set wrong as all my other programs print it correctly. (Open
Office Writer, Photoshop, Adobe InDesign CS - I have not tried MS Word.) I
have used different file formats, but still nothing prints correctly. Any
help you can give me would be appreciated.

 

[Ed Bennett]

For the past several years I have been using Photoshop to creat
graphics with drop shadows. I recently tried to use them with
Publsiher 2003 and instead of the shadow gently fading to white,
there is a shadow with a vivid stopping point in Publsher when I
print. On the screen it looks OK.

Publisher does not blur or feather the edges of shadows. Shadows are one
colour, and do have a defined edge to them.

 

[Mary Sauer]

It is more a duplication than a shadow. Transparency does not print well in
Publisher, if at all. You will never get a shadow in Publisher that emulates
PhotoShop or Corel objects. Copy/Paste special your shadowed object as a enhanced
metafile, it will print with the transparency intact. Might try manually applying a
shadow using the "fill effects" gradients. Publisher is a page layout program with
enough drawing tools to make a publication interesting and eye catching. Art is best
done in an graphics application.

 

[funzero]

These shadows are part of the graphic now (produced in Photoshop), not
Publishers own showdowing. I played with it some here at work on a color and
regular LJ and I got some feathering, but it was in bands and not smooth
transitions.

 

[Ed Bennett]

These shadows are part of the graphic now (produced in Photoshop), not
Publishers own showdowing. I played with it some here at work on a
color and regular LJ and I got some feathering, but it was in bands
and not smooth transitions.

I see...

As Mary states, Publisher does not handle semitransparency well.

The best way I've found to accomplish semitransparency in Publisher is to
use an EPS file, and then to print to a PostScript printer (with language
level 2 or higher). Publisher will then pass the PostScript data straight
through, preserving the transparency.