Here's the dealy-o. Anytime I use a raster graphic in Illustrator (embedded or otherwise), when I print it out, there's this "halo" box around the image!!!

I've tried everything I can think of to fix these. I'll use a clipping mask for some of them, and on others I can fix it by playing with a transparency mask. But some I just can't do that. (example: text shadowing) The only sure fire method is to rasterize the background (shadows and layout- not text) as one big honkin' image. This shoots my file size all to he11 and kind of defeats the purpose of using vector graphics in the first place.

Does anybody know if I can avoid this or how I can fix it?

- Hanzeeg

Which version you using?

I'm using CS2, but I saw it on ver 9 as well. Could it be the color mode? RGB or CMYK?

Sounds like a shadow color that should be set to overprint. If there was a way that we could see what you are talking about, it would really narrow it down. Can you take a screen shot of the file and circle where the problem is? It could be a number of things.
Select the shadow color in illustrator. Open the attributes menu and check "overprint fill" Then print it. Better yet, Go to view/ Overprint Preview. Does the halo show up. If it does, then something needs to be set to "overprint fill."

i always output my raster images through quarkxpress. putting them in illustrator takes up too much memory and rip time.

which printer are you sending your files to?

Our graphics dept uses an HP 3500 laser printer. It doesn't appear to be a printer issue. I have a Canon S9000 for ink jet or photo prints and I get the same results from that printer.

I gave up on quark a long time ago. If things slow down enough for me to try and learn a new program, I'll switch to indesign CS2

The file is probably a bit large for posting or email.

I'm swamped this morning, so I'll try to follow up later today.

Then you're not separating the subject from the background
efficiently. Try this:
--Make the initial selection of the subject in the original image.
--Select> Modify> Contract, 2 pixels.
--Select> Feather, 1 pixel.
--Copy.
--Paste into a transparent background.
--Save.
--Place into Illustrator.

Hope this helps.

This is not the thread I was looking for.

Same here Wett