Flattening PDF Transparencies While Retaining Color Fidelity

Transparencies are wonderful for expressing rich, visual experiences in a PDF document.

Flattening transparencies is a very complex process, which is why you need to be confident that your tool is up to the task. When flattening transparencies, the engine must first individually composite any transparency groups in the page and then composite those into the page level blending space before replacing the translucent objects with non-translucent ones, all while accounting for overprint, spot colors, render intents and ICC profiles in the process.

pdfRest’s Flatten Transparencies API Tool is built with Adobe technology, offering the same unparalleled color management and rendering engines trusted by enterprises worldwide. The API’s quality setting options for low, medium, and high correspond to the Acrobat Pro flattener presets that your organization’s graphic designers and pre-press staff already use to ensure consistency between display and print.

• Low - ideal for proofs that will be printed on black-and-white desktop printers and for documents that will be published on the web.
• Medium - best for desktop proofs and documents that will be printed on color printers.
• High - ideal for final press outputs when high quality separations-based color proofs are needed.

With pdfRest, you can afford to work with the gold-standard quality you deserve. Always free to get started, only pay when your needs start to scale.

Code Example: Medium Quality   |   Load this into API Lab↗

    curl -X POST "https://api.pdfrest.com/flattened-transparencies-pdf" \ 
        -H "Accept: application/json" \ 
        -H "Content-Type: multipart/form-data" \
        -H "Api-Key: xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx" \
        -F "file=@PATH_TO_FILE/pdfrest.pdf" \ 
        -F "output=pdfRest_flattened_transparencies" \ 
        -F "quality=medium" \
        

Flatten Transparencies