On Thursday 27 August 2009 10:49:20 a.l.e wrote: > hi john > > > To be clear I am asking for an internal way to merge layers down > > in such a way that the overall appearance is not affected, as can > > be done in Gimp. Scribus using pdf 1.3 output will today reduce > > layers, but effects like blends are lost. > > there are two functionalities in gimp: > > - on exporting to jpg or png you can reduce the image to one layer > > - you can manually merge down one (or several?) layers. > > > the first will not be implemented (always afaik) in scribus in the > near future (but is plannned and difficult). > > the second can already be achieved by copy-pasting the items from > one layer to another (and setting the correct blends for the > elements pasted). > > the .sla won't export better to pdf 1.3, though: the problem is not > that there are layers, but that you have transparencies which have > to be flattened. > > so at the end, what you are looking for (if i understood > correctly) is flattening of transparencies not merging of layers. > > have fun > a.l.e
Some printing standards (PDF/X1a:2001 comes to mind) won't handle either layers or transparencies. So there is a need to flatten the layers and also blend if necessary the items on those layers. In other words is there is a semi-transparent band as a background for some text on e.g. a book cover or a newsletter headline (think the Yugo tutorial) there needs to be a way to preserve that visual effect. This would be a manual, layer at a time process. Layers in Scribus are very handy during development because they can be made invisible or visible as needed. I can handle the problem by exporting to pdf 1.5, viewing the resultant pdf in Acrobat Reader, printing to file and converting the resultant PS file to pdf 1.3 or X/3. But that is a clumsy and complex approach and may cause some degradation of e.g., print. My request is simple to state but probably difficult to accomplish: provide a way to merge layers and objects in layers while keeping the appearance of the document the same, in order to accommodate the requirements of some big printers in the USA. -- John Culleton Able Indexers and Typesetters
