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I am using an online PDF generator to generate the attached PDF.

While the PDF opens and looks OK on adobe Acrobat (I tested several different versions including Reader and Pro) the transparent layers are printed as white boxes when sent to printer (either a real printer or another PDF printer like PDFill PDF&Image Writer.

Any idea what's wrong with the transparent layers and how to fix them?

This is the file: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18517313/flyer.pdf

Kurt Pfeifle
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user1999624
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3 Answers3

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There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the file to me, and it prints apparently correctly for me when printed from Adobe Acrobat. How are you printing the file ?

KenS
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One workaround would be opening the file in Acrobat Pro, and use the Flattening Preview (to be found among the Print Production Tools) to flatten the transparencies.

Max Wyss
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  • Yes, this is the best option. Transparency is tricky and many tools get it wrong. This is what happens here: seems like your printer, nor PDFill have implemented transparency correctly. – Bruno Lowagie Dec 01 '14 at 10:09
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When you print a PDF (or any other format) from an application, several sub systems are involved. The application (such as Adobe Reader) makes calls to the graphics subsystem of the OS (such as GDI on Windows). The OS, in turn passes these calls to the printer driver which is responsible for converting these calls (such as draw line, fill path, etc.) to instructions that are understood by the printer that you selected. These instructions are referred to as the page description language or PDL. Examples of PDLs are PostScript and PCL. This abstraction is good because applications no longer need to ship their own printer drivers. The downside is that the API of the graphics subsystem and the PDL both put restrictions on the richness of your graphics.

Transparency is a typical feature that is present in PDF but only limited available in PostScript. To achieve the same visual result, the feature is approximated. In case of transparency this is called flattening as Max Wyss points out.

By the way, applications (such as Adobe Acrobat) may choose to by-pass the OS and driver and generate the PDL themselves. This is referred to as pass-through printing. Although this circumvents the limitations of the graphics subsystem, the output is still bound to the PDL of your printer.

Frank Rem
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