Why does this look different in flexi?

[Phill Fenton]

I suspect the image is vector drawn whereas the "soft shadow" is a rendered (rasterised) image. The solid look to the soft shadow in flexi is a result of how it handles rendered images within the file. If it’s a version of Flexi that is for cut vinyl only then it probably can’t handle rendered images properly since soft shadow effects can only be achieved by printing them.

[Ewan Chrystal]

It was opened in flexi pro and unfortunately printed the solid shadow

[Phill Fenton]

Can you by-pass flexi and print directly from the ai file?

[Ewan Chrystal]

Probably, i’m just trying to establish if its a problem at my end or whether the problem comes from whoever designed it

[David McDonald]

Hi Ewan

This isn’t uncommon with Flexisign – soft shadows become solid, gradients become 100’s of small vectors etc. etc.

It’s not just the ‘cut’ versions – does it on them all.

As Phil says print from Illustrator, or export as an EPS into your RIP – haven’t seen a RIP that takes native AI files?

Cheers
Macky

[Ewan Chrystal]

Ive done a normal print straight from AI and it was perfect, so it looks like a flexi issue. Thanks for the replies. will need to remember that for the future

[Jon Marshall]

Flexi doesn’t handle Illustrator files all that well, especially with all the constant updates to Illustrator.

[Kevin Flowers]

Ewan
subject to which version of Flexi you are using it does support rendered transparent shadows but still struggles with AI files i use to just recreate the shadow directly in Flexi

Kev