Picture boxes - need white fill?

[Morgan19]

My art director and I were talking about this earlier this morning. He was taught that any picture boxes in Quark need a white fill when possible (even if it doesn't show up because it's technically covered) and that if you *don't* have that white fill some parts of the image, such as smooth gradations from a color to white, will turn out rough and jagged. However we have one print piece which uses clipping layers-- the clipped images obviously don't have white backgrounds and even the "background" image (a graphic flooded across the page) didn't have a white fill when we sent it to press.

So my question is, is his thinking valid or is he just hanging onto something that doesn't matter anymore? Either way'll be fine, we'd just like to know so we can possibly save ourselves some time in the future.

Thanks,
m19

 

[blueark]

I tend to use a colored background for most picture boxes... just in case! I don't think it necessarily has to be white, just not set to none. Although it's probably done more out of habit than anything else, I have found that TIFF files in particular can become a bit unreliable. EPS files are fine, in my experience anyway.

One reason is compatibility with later versions of Quark. I've received a few files saved in Quark 3.x, and when I open them in Quark 4, they take forever to open. I found that the problem stemmed from people setting the background to none. Quark 4 interpreted this as setting the clipping options to 'non-white areas'. This resulted in over-complicated clipping paths that degraded the image and it's not always obvious where the problem could be.

Hope this helps!

 

[Morgan19]

Thanks blueark, that is good to know. The reason I brought it up is because of the clipping issues. I realized this morning that I *couldn't* make some of the images have colored backgrounds because of the path, thereby eliminating the path anyway, and it got me thinking about why they'd need to be colored in the first place. He just left the office for the weekend about 15 minutes ago but I'll definitely pass on your info so he knows as well.

Thanks again!
m19

 

[blueark]

No problem! I just read back over my message again, and I don't know if I made it clear about clipping paths. Because the clipped area is already defined, it shouldn't cause any problems if the background is clear. Still, just to be safe, save them as EPS files. I know Quark can accept clipping paths saved in other formats too, and I haven't had any personal experience of them causing problems, but I seem to recall someone complaining about clipping paths in TIFF files on a newsgroup a few months ago, so best not tempt fate, eh?!

 

[Morgan19]

Yep, already got the clipped images as EPSes, and we did another quick comp... lo and behold, they show up fine. *shrug* I think I'll still suggest filling the farthest back images white (or otherwise) just in case.

m19

 

[afral]

The issue of clipping is real. A white spot in a photgraph could become a HOLE showing the background underneath. A photo box using a photograph TIF use white. Not needed with EPS's of line art. Let freedom ring!

 

[PixelMasher]

Depend on what kind of Rip your printer uses, a picture set to none can sometimes get rasterzed edeges.