If your document or artwork contains transparency, to be output it usually needs to undergo a process called flattening. Flattening divides transparent artwork into vector-based areas and rasterized areas. As artwork becomes more complex (mixing images, vectors, type, spot colors, overprinting, and so on), so does the flattening and its results.

Flattening may be necessary when you print or when you save or export to other formats that don’t support transparency. To retain transparency without flattening when you create PDF files, save your file as Adobe PDF 1.4 (Acrobat 5.0) or later.

You can specify flattening settings and then save and apply them as transparency flattener presets. Transparent objects are flattened according to the settings in the selected flattener preset.

Overlapping art is divided when flattened.

For more information on transparency output issues, see the Print Service Provider Resources page of the Adobe Solutions Network (ASN) (English only), available on the Adobe website.