To the previous person who said Quark doesn't get it... YOU don't get it! I have to deal with junk sent in by people who don't have a clue how to prepare files to be printed every day. I bet who ever gets your jobs feels the same way!

Transparency is NEVER used unflattened in print production. Quark is outputting the file correctly. All the so-called artist who insist on using layered native files don't have a clue what goes on after the printer gets the file. We flatten everything, and generally convert native files to formats like TIFF and EPS. Why? OPI that's why. Most RIPS don't know what a .PSD or .AI file is, and the RIP will abort.

Presses don't print transparency. They print a CMYK rendering of what the shade would be if it wasn't transparent. You have to flatten and raster process (RIP) that file to get there.

Transparency is more of a headache than anything else, especially with applications like Illustrator. Generally the same artist also has their transparency flattening settings to low resolution as well as their raster settings to 72 ppi! It's just a short cut for lazy people. Yes, doing it the right way often takes longer, but then the production artist at the printer wont have to mess with the stupid files all day, and the client will save a lot on pre-press time. Also, if you are printing with spot colors? Forget transparency. It doesn't work. Make a tint instead. The spot will get RIP'ed to CMYK.

InDesign is great, but Quark was smart to stay away from that junk. Do everyone a favor and create your transparencies in something like Illustrator and then *flatten the file* and save it as an EPS! Your printer will thank you, or at least not call you names behind your back.

I've been in print industry for the past 29 years, and I've seen nothing but the quality of files sent in go down the tubes. I don't know what schools are teaching (or more importantly NOT teaching) these days, but most designers don't understand printing AT ALL... most don't what a spot color is and when to use one, (or they wouldn't use 10 spots on a 4 color job) and don't realize that most RIP's cannot use native layered files. I see stupid things everyday like white set to overprint, spot colors used on CMYK jobs, CMYK used on two color spot jobs, spot "process black" used on CMYK jobs, and instead of doing a tint of a color, they drop a transparent white over it! Stupid. That's not the correct way to do things. It's a kluge! Who taught you people this junk? Go get your money back!

Luckily these days we RIP everything to PDF first (Printergy EVO or RAMpage), but the files do get flattened. Don't fool yourself. Even then there's more problems then there should be. All those transparent areas that weren't flattened often show up as white boxes.

Quark has its place in the industry, and as much as I use ID, I still prefer Quark's ways of doing things, like using picture boxes. ID is too often much like PageMaker. And when we can't get difficult ID files to print, we save the pages as EPS files and print them from Quark!