I know this is a photoshop forum, but I'm just exasperated. My designer has created some pdf portfolios from In Design (which I don't own and have never used) . They are quite blurry and off color. I have taken the same images and run them in PHotoshop and Bridge 4 and the pdfs produced by PS and Bridge looks 10 times shaper and clearer.
Why? This gets complex becuase they are all formatted quite complexly for In Design, and it will take too much time to re-formatt them for Photoshop or Bridge. But she has no idea why they are not coming out sharp and nice with In Design. any ideas. It's not compression. She has been outputting with no compression from In Design and they still look subpar.
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__________________ MAC 10.4.12
CS4
Mac G5/ dual 1.8
CANON 5D
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
I have not used InDesign in a while, but, as far as I remember, images could be linked rather than embedded and the link inserted a low res version of the image in the document. When you generate an output in any format, the low res version of the image is replaced with a high res image. If for some reason the indesign document is moved, indesign then cannot find the linked images to generate the high res image.
There is a way to update the links (again from memory, it was a tab with all the linked images).
Sorry I'm a bit vague but its been a while since I used InDesign and I do not have it installed any more.
Hope this helps.
Gerry
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Aside from the compression setting in the InDesign PDF export settings, there is also a down-sampling setting for graphics which should be set to none for maximum quality images.
It may be your InDesign display settings that are affecting the appearance of PDFs on your monitor. From the InDesign preferences make sure that you are set to display high quality graphics.
I have not used InDesign in a while, but, as far as I remember, images could be linked rather than embedded and the link inserted a low res version of the image in the document. When you generate an output in any format, the low res version of the image is replaced with a high res image. If for some reason the indesign document is moved, indesign then cannot find the linked images to generate the high res image.
There is a way to update the links (again from memory, it was a tab with all the linked images).
Sorry I'm a bit vague but its been a while since I used InDesign and I do not have it installed any more.
Hope this helps.
Gerry
This is more than likely the culprit. I always use the InDesign "Package" command prior to saving any project. This places all linked files and fonts in one folder for export. If the image links have been broken, option(alt) + click on the image in InDesign image will re-establish the missing links (provided the original images are on your computer). This can also be accomplished through the links dialog box.
InDesign has 6 or so options under file > 'pdf file presets' command. I thought you wanted these for internet use, so you would select 'screen'.
Otherwise, there are lots of custom options for your designer to choose as Jerry suggested.
InDesign is actually the preferred tool for making documents for press & web use. Like any other tool, your designer just needs to get up to speed. As opposed to PS, InDesign wants to keep speed a priority and wants to show you high rez images only when necessary.
What I prefer to do is make most of my pricing using either Word if it's simple or PS if it's complex and then convert to pdf. It's a matter of speed for me and I'm much faster on either Word or PS. InDesign has some features that you simply can't create in anything else though (except Corel which is another topic).
For sure, if you're creating these for internet use only, you want to keep files as small as they can go without loss of quality. Keep in mind that pdf's are not necessarliy the best way to go for web use unless you want documents that cannot be altered. If simplicity, speed and quality are paramount, better to create in a web program and use jpg's for images - just MHO.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Thanks, these are PDF portfolios I email out once in a while, based on a hard-copy portfolio. Quality is much more important than speed. I can compress them better myself later with PDF compress. Any other ideas welcomed.
__________________ MAC 10.4.12
CS4
Mac G5/ dual 1.8
CANON 5D
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Linear Mode
