For displaying shadows over images, the underlying background image is slightly darkened. This is not possible on printers because the printer driver (unlike the graphics card/monitor drivers) no longer has access to the existing background image data. This means that there is no way to calculate shadows. Shadows can only be calculated by the printer driver with single-color backgrounds of a specified color. For this reason, FamilyTreeFactory allows you to activate either a shadow or background images, but not both at once.

This problem also exists with Free Image and Text Objects, which can be manually placed anywhere you like. Here are two examples with overlapping Image Objects that illustrate the problem:

If the Image Object in the higher layer overlaps at the bottom right, the shadows are drawn normally. If it overlaps at the top left, the shadow (the darkened white background) is not displayed correctly over the image in the lower layer. The same is true when person boxes and Free Text Objects overlap. FamilyTreeFactory checks for this problem with most elements before printing or exporting. A message will indicate which elements are causing the problem and you will be given the option of canceling the process. This can help to avoid misprints.

For Geo Objects, the software does not check overlaps with other Free Objects or person boxes - the complexity of such a check makes it practically impossible to perform.

In addition, no check is performed for overlaps between Free Objects with shadows above the person box layer and connection lines. The following image shows an example of such a case:

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