9.3

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 print stream — as items are fed to the
print engine — 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 blends 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.
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.
248 | A GUIDE TO QUARKXPRESS 9.3
OUTPUT