🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1118797655.550572.293210@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
 aluxelocochon@yahoo.com wrote:

> I hope you guys can help me. I recently made an ad in adobe illustrator
> which has a greyscale image with an orange to transparent gradient on
> top made by creating an opacity mask. Well on the screen it looks fine
> and so I sent it to the comercial printer. However when the comercial
> printer gave us the proof it shows a sort of lighter hue band in the
> area where the orange gradient ends and meets with the grey image
> below. In other words, instead of the gradient blending smoothly with
> the grey image below (as it shows on screen!) there is like a lighter
> strip that just almost ends abrouptly and looks bad where the gradient
> ends.

I think I know exactly what you're talking about. If so, what you are 
seeing is an optical illusion; the "stripe" at the end of the gradient 
appears because the gradient ends abruptly and the human eye has a trait 
called "lateral inhibition," which exaggerates edges in a way similar to 
the way unsharp masking works.

I have had similar problems with Quark and Illustrator created gradients 
which end at an image. The solution? Create the gradient in Photoshop, 
which will add a small amount of noise to dither the gradient, which 
helps get rid of the appearance of the bright "stripe" or line where it 
ends. (Your inkjet print does not shop this optical illusion in part 
because it, too, uses dithering to produce color.)

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