PowerPoint Mac to PC / gradient fill

E

ebfinedesign

I have an object with a black–transparent radial gradient layered over an image background on a slide.

The gradient displays and prints well on the Mac, it displays accurately on my clients PC, but does not print on the PC printer. Thanks.
 
J

June Low [MSFT]

Hi eb :)

What are you not seeing print on the PC printer? The object or the
background? Or the gradient in the object?

June
OfficeArt Tester, MacBU
Microsoft
 
E

ebfinedesign

Thanks for your reply, June. It’s the gradient only that is not printing properly; prints as a “big brown box” according to my client. They scanned their printed page and e-mailed it to me. It looks like their system may not be seeing the transparency in the gradient. Is transparency a cross-platform issue?

eb
 
S

Steve Rindsberg

I have an object with a black–transparent radial gradient layered over an
image background on a slide.

The gradient displays and prints well on the Mac, it displays accurately on
my clients PC, but does not print on the PC printer. Thanks.

I didn't know these'd print well on the Mac.
It's a known problem on the Windows version, though ... transparent gradients
dont' seem to work at all to PostScript printers and may or may not work to
other printers.

The usual dodge is to select the object with transparent gradient and anything
beneath it, copy to the clipboard then paste special as PNG.

Sometimes that works, sometimes it's just not practical, depending on what's on
the slide.

================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================
 
S

Steve Rindsberg

Steve, is all transparency a problem for Windows, or is it just gradients?

It's a PowerPoint issue rather than Windows per se.
In fact, it's version-specific ... PPT 2007 seems to have solved the problem.
Gradient transparency prints ok.

Some printers may have trouble with alpha transparency, which gets converted to
1-bit transparency.

IOW, you have, say, a PNG image with transparent mask of varying densities.
It looks fine but when you print to a PostScript printer, the mask goes from
grayscale to on/off, no in between.

1-bit transparency works fine.

================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================
 
S

Steve Rindsberg

Steve, is all transparency a problem for Windows, or is it just gradients?

A little added information after a few tests here:

In Windows/PPT 2007, you need to put a check next to "High Quality" in the
print dialog box.

If you do this, transparencies and transparent gradients print nicely, but more
slowly than otherwise because of the extra data PPT has to send to the printer
to make transparency work.

If in doubt, click "Preview" to get a very good idea what the output will look
like *with the current print dialog box settings*.

As noted, this only flies in 2007; earlier versions of PPT/Windows can't
properly print these effects.


================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================
 
M

Matt Centurión [MSFT]

Also, make sure "High Quality" is checked in the WinPPT2007 Print Dialog box
for many of these effects to print well. It *will* slow down printing on
Windows, but will look more like what Macs print by default :D

Matt
MacOffice Testing
Microsoft
 

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