[Scribus] Collection of Tips

[Stewart Noy]

Craig Ringer wrote:
> 
> Christoph Sch?fer wrote:
>> Am Montag, 6. August 2007 08:37 schrieb Stewart Noy:
>>> Thomas Zastrow-4 wrote:
>>>> Stewart Noy schrieb:
>>>>> Thomas Zastrow-4 wrote:
>>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> my little collection with Scribus tips / tutorials is now online:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://www.thomas-zastrow.de/readarticle.php?article_id=42
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Best,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Tom
>>>>> Nice one Thomas. I was going to use the text over images,
>>>>> unfortunately
>>>>> I soon found out that transparency isn't yet supported :( Ah well,
>>>>> good
>>>>> ideas
>>>>> though!
>>>>>
>>>>> Stewart
>>>> Hi Stewart,
>>>>
>>>> certainly Scribus supports transparency, take a look at the properties
>>>> dialog under "Colors", there you can set the opacity to any value you
>>>> want. Also exporting to PDF was never a problem for me.
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>>
>>>> Tom
>>> Hi, yeah I seem to be able to export to PDF 1.4 with transparency, but
>>> to
>>> PDF/X-3 (which is what I need) the Preflight Verifier gives me an
>>> "Object
>>> Has Transparency" message, and when I do export to PDF the transparency
>>> has
>>> been removed leaving a solid colour.
>>> Am I doing something wrong?
>> 
>> No. PDF/X-3 doesn't support transparency, that's all ;)
> 
> As the current Scribus PDF export engine cannot flatten transparency
> internally, that means you can't use transparency at all for PDF/X-3 .
> 
> At some point it's likely that Scribus's PDF output will be enhanced so
> that it can render areas that use transparency to bitmaps and include
> them in the PDF. There are some interesting complications with doing
> this, though, especially with getting the edges between the vector and
> raster bits to match properly, getting the same anti-aliasing, and
> ensuring that colour management is performed consistently on the
> different parts of the PDF. As a result, it might just convert the
> _whole_ PDF to a bitmap if transparency is used.
> 
> That's your best workaround at this point if your design cannot be
> accomplished without the use of transparent elements. Export to PDF 1.4
> or similar (something with transparency support) then rasterize your PDF
> to an image using something like GhostScript. If your printers will
> accept a TIFF, just send them that. If they really require PDF/X-3, you
> can bundle the TIFF up on a Scribus page and export *that* as PDF/X-3 .
> 
> Convoluted? Yes. But it'll work. Do keep a careful eye on your colour
> though.
> 
> The GIMP seems to do an OK job of rasterizing PDF (using gs internally I
> think) but will ruin CMYK colours, so it's probably not a good choice.
> Avoid it.
> 
> At work I have to deal with malformed PDFs that neither Acrobat nor
> Photoshop can handle. I usually rasterize these with gs and provide a
> TIFF to our production department. Here's the command line I use
> (normally wrapped up in a simple script but I've extracted just the
> basic command line):
> 
> gs -sDEVICE=tiff24nc -sOutputFile="OUTFILE.tiff" -r300x300 \
>         -dTextAlphaBits=4 -dGraphicsAlphaBits=4 \
>         -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET "INFILE.pdf"
> 
> Replace OUTFILE.tiff and INFILE.pdf as appropriate. If you want a script
> to do it, something like this should do the trick when saved to a text
> file:
> 
> ----
> #!/bin/bash
> #
> # Use GhostScript to convert a PDF to a TIFF
> set -e -u
> if test $# != 2; then
>         echo "Usage: $0 input.pdf output.tiff"
>         exit 1
> fi
> gs -sDEVICE=tiff24nc -sOutputFile="$2" -r300x300 \
>         -dTextAlphaBits=4 -dGraphicsAlphaBits=4 \
>         -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET "$1"
> ----
> 
> then run `chmod a+x /path/to/script' to make it executable.
> 
> Adjust the -r300x300 parameter to match your required resolution.
> 
> --
> Craig Ringer
> 
> 

Excellent, thanks alot for the tips. At this point I was only planning on
using the effect on three to four pages, so unless this increases I might
just give it a miss and try something else. Don't need too many more
complications than there already are :)

Stewart  

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