Black boxes in VPS file

Can anyone tell me why I am getting black boxes behind text and pictures when imposing my PDF to a VPS file? This does not happen when I impose a PDF to a PDF but only PDF to VPS.

 

Thanks

Are you using dropshadows or other transparency effects on those items? I've found those things cause things like black boxes and other weird effects.

These are customer supplied PDFs. Yes, I looked at the last one we did and it has drop shadows around the text and also around product images.

Although we don't use the VPS workflow, we have made it a habit to place customer-supplied PDF files in InDesign and then re-output PDFs using our own job settings to make sure fonts are embedded, transparencies are flattened, etc.

Sounds like a lot of extra work. I have been flattening in Acrobat when I think about it and I can check the fonts in an older version I have of Pitstop. Will flattening the file take care of this?

Yes, but acrobat is not always the best for flattining file.. you might want to open it in photoshop.

I don't want the text pixelated. Won't that happen if I open it in Photoshop?

Yes. It certainly will. I ran into that many times early on. And yes, it is a lot of extra work. I haven't found a way around it though. Maybe someone else on the forum has.