Question
What happens to overprinting process white (0% CMYK) objects when saving to AI with PDF Compatibility, Adobe® PDF or Normalized PDF from Adobe® Illustrator® CC or newer and viewing them in Acrobat® or ArtPro+?
Answer
Since the first Creative Cloud version of Adobe® Illustrator® you can find an option in Illustrator®'s Document Setup for .AI documents: Discard White Overprint in Output: to either discard the overprint tag of overprinting process white (0% CMYK) objects (default setting!) in the output file or preserve the overprint tag.
The discard white overprint in output feature will only be applied to the output file, so in Adobe® Illustrator®'s Overprint Preview, this setting is not applied and objects will still look overprinting.
When creating overprinting white objects in Adobe® Illustrator®, you get a warning message mentioning there are process white objects in your selection and that overprinting would only make sense in combination with transparency effects.
Adobe® Illustrator®'s Overprint Preview will still show the objects as overprinting.
In Adobe® Acrobat® Professional or Adobe® Reader when opening AI with PDF Compatibility or Adobe® PDF files
Preserve overprint (AI + PDF):
Discard overprint (AI + PDF):
In ArtPro+ when opening Adobe® PDF files.
Preserve overprint:
Discard overprint:
In ArtPro+ when opening Ai files with PDF Compatibility
Preserve overprint: The object is set to overprint but the process separations are set to knock-out. If you would add a separation, that separation would be set to overprint.
Discard overprint:
When exporting Normalized PDF (both for preserve or discard white overprint in output) we will always discard the fill color completely, resulting in lineart with empty fills or strokes.
| Article information | |
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| Applies to | ArtPro+ all versions DeskPack all versions |
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| Author | SDME |
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