2019

OUTPUT
416 | A Guide to QuarkXPress 2019
Understanding flattening and production issues
Flattening is the process of simulating transparency by altering page elements to
produce the intended design. Flattening occurs only in the output stream — as
items are fed to the print engine, or exported to PDF — so your QuarkXPress layouts
are never actually modified. In QuarkXPress, flattening works as follows.
First, boxes are decomposed, transparent elements are identified, and relationships
between discrete shapes (including text outlines) are deconstructed. Regions that do
not have to be rasterized are filled with a new color that is created by merging
existing colors. (None and 0% opacity areas do not need to be flattened except
when used for gradients and pictures.)
Regions that need to be rasterized result in clipping paths. (Semi-opaque pictures,
drop shadows, semi-opaque blends, and semi-opaque items that overlap page
elements must be rasterized.)
The settings in the Transparency pane of the Print dialog box (File menu) control
the output resolution of page elements that are rasterized due to transparency
effects or drop shadows. For more information, see “Transparency pane.”
In general, when working with transparency relationships, trapping is not
necessary.
If color fonts are applied with transparency, then to increase the flattening 
resolution use the Transparent Objects in Imported PDF & AI Files flattening
resolution option.
When exporting a PDF, you can choose whether to flatten items that are in 
transparency relationships or to use native PDF transparency. If you export a PDF
with native PDF transparency, vector graphics in transparency relationships remain
in vector format. This can result in faster output and make color management
easier. Most modern workflows benefit from exporting unflattened transparency.
The ideal and recommended format is a PDF/X-4.
PDF
The Print and Pre-Press industry has widely adopted the ISO standard PDF to
exchange files.
With QuarkXPress you can:
Save a page or range of pages from a QuarkXPress layout as a Portable Document •
Format (PDF) file. For more information, see “Exporting a layout in PDF format.”
Import a page of a PDF file into a picture box. For more information, see •
“Importing a PDF file into a picture box.”
Importing a PDF file into a picture box
To import a PDF file into the active picture box:
Choose File > Import. 1.
The Import dialog displays.