Why do shadows, glows and transparency cause printing problems?

Effects like drop shadows, glows, soft edges and transparent images look fine on screen, but they can print with boxes, white patches or hard edges around them. This happens most often when the effect sits on top of a spot (Pantone) color.

To avoid it:

• Convert all spot and Pantone colors to CMYK.
• Flatten the file before you save it.
• Check the result in a PDF viewer at full size, looking closely around shadows and transparent areas.

All of this is fixed in your design file before upload. Once it's printed, it can't be corrected.