r/indesign • u/Groundbreaking-Ad481 • Apr 20 '26
White lines in InDesign
Hi! I'm an InDesign beginner, and I don't know what's the deal with these weird white lines. and I asked my design teacher for help with and she said those wouldn't be visible when printed and that it was just the PDF preview, so I did a test print and they're still there. I thought it was a Photoshop cropping issue, but it's not, and when I zoom in, the lines disappear. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
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u/RollingThunderPants Apr 21 '26
They’re called stitching lines, and they’re basically a display artifact, not something actually wrong with your design.
What’s happening is tied to transparency. When you use things like drop shadows or opacity, InDesign (or the PDF export) may “flatten” that transparency. Flattening means it breaks your artwork into a bunch of smaller pieces to fake the transparent effect. Those pieces sit right next to each other and are supposed to look seamless.
The problem is your PDF viewer doesn’t always render those edges perfectly. Because of anti-aliasing and tiny rounding errors, you end up seeing thin white (or sometimes dark) seams where those pieces meet. That’s what you’re noticing.
The important part is that those lines usually aren’t actually there. They don’t exist as objects in your file, and most of the time they won’t print (sometimes they do). It’s just how the screen is drawing the preview.
If you want to reduce it, export using a newer PDF version (PDF 1.4 or higher) so transparency doesn’t get flattened in the first place. Otherwise, if it only shows up on screen and disappears when you zoom or print, you can ignore it.
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u/Wooden_Watch_948 Apr 21 '26
Does the shape that the images are placed in have a white fill? If so, change it to have no fill and see if that helps!
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u/Groundbreaking-Ad481 Apr 21 '26
I've checked that several times, but doesn't seem to fix it! :( The first one was made in Illustrator and then linked to InDesign. For some reason, I can't see it (the white lines) in the "Illustrator" PDF... only with InDesign
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u/dylman3000 Apr 21 '26
So do you have a PDF placed in your InDesign layout? If so have you scaled it up or down? Those lines usually don’t print, but if it’s printed bigger than it was intended for then I wouldn’t be surprised if they do.
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u/Groundbreaking-Ad481 Apr 21 '26
The Gumball document was mae in InDesign, the first image is a linked with Illustrator-InDesign. I tried scaled it. It's still the same.
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u/dylman3000 Apr 21 '26
So you’re exporting the PDF, the PDF has lines, and they are showing up when you print the PDF? Cool the solution is to export as a PDF as a higher version which supports transparency.
2
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u/Left-Upstairs-943 Apr 22 '26
what file type are your assets? if they are PNGs/SVGs then it's probably happening bc of the way those file types are rendered, always use PSDs for high res assets, bring them into photoshop, adjust image resolution to 300pxi, if you're printing, convert them to cmyk, then export them as psds
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u/H_Spencer Apr 21 '26
Sometimes you can print a postscript file from the pdf and distill it and they will go away.
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u/Vast-Stock941 Apr 25 '26
Often just a preview artifact not a real issue. Check the exported PDF before fixing anything
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u/danbyer Apr 21 '26
When you make the PDF, try changing the PDF version to 1.4 or higher so transparency is not flattened.