During personalization, you may want to show the user some additional information like die lines or guides for designing their document. In Illustrator and InDesign you can create non-printing layers for your PDF. Once uploaded, the preview will show the non-printing layer to the user during the personalization session. The non-printing layer will also be included in the generated PDF, but will be turned off, or invisible, by default. Non-printing layers will remain visible during the personalization session. Any text or images added by users during personalization will appear on top of any invisible layers.
Creating Non-Printing Layers in Illustrator
To create a non-printing layer in Illustrator, open your document and make sure the Layers panel is visible. Double click on the Layer that you wish to make non-priniting and make sure that "Print" is unchecked for the Layer.
Then Save As a PDF. Make sure that Compatibility is set to Acrobat 6 or later and that "Create Acrobat Layers from Top Level Layers" is checked.
**Creating Non-Printing Layers in InDesign**
To create a non-printing layer in InDesign, open your document and make sure the Layers panel is visible. Double click on the Layer that you wish to make non-printing and make sure that "Print Layer" is unchecked in Layer Options.
Then Export to a PDF. Make sure that Compatibility is set to Acrobat 6 or later and that "Create Acrobat Layers" is checked.
**Creating Your PDF Template**
Once you open the PDF (whether created in Illustrator or InDesign) in Acrobat to apply PDFLib blocks, you can make the non-printing layer visible by opening the Layers palette and clicking the Eyeball visibility icon. You can then use this layer as a guide when creating blocks. Make the non-printing layer invisible again and Save the PDF when you're done adding blocks.
Create a product on the Design Server, upload the template you created and assign block permissions accordingly. The background image generated by the Design Server will include the non-printing layer in the preview and user will then see the non-printing layer during the personalization session.
After the user approves their design and you download the generated PDF, by default the non-printing layer is invisible once you open the file in Acrobat.
Again using the Layers palette in Acrobat, you can turn on/off the visibility of the non-printing layer.
If you right click on the Layer, you can see that the Print setting in Layer Properties is set to "Prints When Visible" by default.
See also: Special Functions in PDFlib (overview of all special functions)