Choosing the Right PDF Preset
Choices, choices. InDesign’s Export Adobe PDF dialog box presents us with seven panels worth of options. This is where PDF presets come in. They group together all these choices into common workflows, and let us choose a preset which works best for what we’re currently doing. (Those who are more expert can create their own presets but we’ll cover that in a different post.)
ID PDF Presets
InDesign CS2 shares its PDF presets with other members of the Adobe Creative Suite 2. If you export or save a PDF out of Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, and even Distiller 7, you’ll see the same five choices. (Distiller calls these settings files, but they are the same. There are also some more specialized PDF presets in other members of the Suite, but those don’t appear in InDesign.) All PDF presets are stored in a common location. If you’re using an earlier version of InDesign, your PDF presets aren’t compatible with other applications.
In this post, we’ll just focus on the initial five presets and when to use them. One is aimed at general desktop printing, three are designed for commercial print workflows, and one for on-screen or web posting.
PDFOptions
High Quality Print: Use this preset to create a PDF document for high-quality printing on desktop printers and proofers. Color and grayscale images are downsampled to 300 ppi. Colors are left unchanged (they aren’t converted to another color space). Transparency is retained (Acrobat 5 compatibility is the default).
Press Quality: Use this PDF preset for high-quality commercial printing where the printer is comfortable receiving a PDF with live transparency. Acrobat 5 compatibility is selected, and transparency isn’t flattened. Color and grayscale images are downsampled to 300 ppi (considered an industry standard for commercial printing). RGB images are converted to CMYK; CMYK values are unchanged. This would be a good choice if your printer is sending this to an imagesetter or platesetter out of Acrobat 7 Professional. Acrobat can handle live transparency and produce high-quality separations.
The next two presets follow PDF/X standards: To reduce printing errors and enable the successful exchange of files, Adobe worked with other vendors and professional users to develop the PDF/X standards—a family of ISO standards which are a subset of PDF designed for print workflows. Many printers are encouraging their customers to use PDF/X. They’re also a good choice if you’re not sure what your printer wants.
PDF/X-1a:2001: Both of the PDF/X presets in InDesign set Acrobat 4 compatibility which flattens transparency. (Therefore, if you choose either of these choices, be sure to visit the Advanced panel and select the High Resolution Transparency Flattener Preset to retain the quality of your type and vectors.) PDF/X-1a supports CMYK and spot colors but doesn’t allow color management. RGB images are converted to CMYK; CMYK values are preserved. Image resolution settings are the same as the Press Quality preset.
PDF/X-3:2002: This PDF/X preset is similar to PDF/X-1a except that it also supports embedded RGB profiles and color management. This standard is more widely used in Europe than in North America. Choose this option for color-managed environments where you expect the printer to optimize color reproduction for the specific printing environment.
Smallest File Size: Use this preset for onscreen display, email, or the web. Color images are downsampled to 100 ppi, grayscale images to 150 ppi. Transparency is retained (Acrobat 5 compatibility is the default).
I have read articles and tutorials about these settings, usually longer texts. But this one is the most clarifying one. I finally got the differences, something not even my printer could.
Thanks for the kind words. I think this is an important subject so I think I’ll do a couple more posts on PDF. One on exporting PDF vs. Distiller. Another one on customizing PDF presets.
Good job Steve!
It does strike me, though, that “Smallest File Size” is not a very good name for that last preset. It is trivially easy to generate a considerably smaller file (which can be important if you’re in early proofing stage with a client with whom you’re exchanging e-mails).
Obviously, 100dpi will give you a better quality than the 72 dpi that the old [Screen] preset of CS days, but that’s the first step to making PDFs smaller still.
And then there’s the question of including profiles. Smallest File Size calls for including the destination profile. That alone can be three or four times larger than the whole of the content.
So, yes, an article of customizing presets is a great idea!
Dave
Another customization I usually make is for printing to a desktop printer (the High Quality Print setting). 300 ppi is really quite a bit more than any desktop printer needs. I would usually choose 150-200 ppi which I think is more reasonable and also keeps file size down.
Steve,
I know you mentioned that those who are more expert can create their own presets but we’ll cover that in a different post. I just wanted to mention ( I know many people including yourself already know this) that for commercial printing you should make sure Marks and Bleeds are also checked.
– James
James,
Actually, you should check with your printer. I just sent a job to a printer a couple of days ago where the printer explicitly told me to suppress all marks.
Dave
Ditto for me, Dave. My printer didn’t want the marks on the PDF.
thanks for this info. I have a newbie question: is it possible to export from ID to a grayscale PDF?
Great question, Mike. Sadly, there’s not yet an easy method in InDesign. If you have Acrobat Professional, you can print to the Adobe PDF printer and choose Composite Gray in the Print dialog box (although EPS files are not converted). The best way to get a grayscale PDF is to use the Convert Color tool in Acrobat 7 or 8 Professional (just out), and choose a grayscale profile to do the conversion.
[...] In last week’s post I discussed how using InDesign’s Export Adobe PDF feature and PDF presets make it quick and easy to create a PDF for a particular workflow—commercial printing, a desktop printer or the web. But you may work with a printer who insists that you shouldn’t send them directly-exported PDF files. Instead, they say that you should create a PostScript file and process it through Distiller. Why do they ask you to do that, anyway? Is it really better? [...]
Hi Steve
2 things - an excellent resource, pass4press suggests that if you distill rather than export you need to have different settings- that Distiller may process psd’s differently (to Export)- please comment.
2-how does InD-export convert non tagged rgb images?
(1) I have no idea who or what “pass4press” is. I’d like to see some documentation of what is different between Distiller 7 and Export from CS2 applications; that has not been my experience.
(2) If you have an untagged RGB, it assigns it the current RGB working space in InDesign, which depends on the Color Settings you’ve chosen in Adobe InDesign’s Edit > Color Settings. It converts it to the current CMYK working space, you’ve chosen.
Steve, Pass4Press is a recently-developed, “industry consortium”-type standard for supplying PDF display ads to magazines. You can download joboptions and ID CS2 PDF presets from their site. Basically they’re tweaked PDF/X settings. For example, you’re supposed to use a custom Transparency Flattener setting that is a duplicate of High Resolution except that the values are 2400/600 (instead of 1200/300). Useful PDFs and instructions are here.
Also Steve, per the Pass4Press group, “Individually-named settings files must be used for InDesign CS2 and Distiller 7 because of the difference in the way the two applications handle colour management, amongst other issues.” This is a quote from the latest version (v6 for 2006) of their guidelines. The link to the guideline PDF is in the body copy of their “About” page I linked to above, or you can click here to download it (16 pp, 13.7 Mb).
Interesting. I hadn’t heard of that group before. I’m downloading their guidelines now.
The industry group which I’ve heard the most about is the Ghent PDF Workgroup. They’ve been around quite a while. Their standard PDF preflight profiles are going to be included in Acrobat 8 Professional.
I did download the Pass4Press specification which is based on the Ghent Workgroup spec for magazines.
I does suggest different presets for InDesign CS2 or Distiller, but it doesn’t go into any detail.
I’ve never heard this raised before and would like more detail which their spec doesn’t give. The Adobe position, which I learned from product manager Lonn Lorenz and the InDesign CS2 Print Guide is that the presets are interchangeable.
If anyone has any details, I’d like to hear about it!
hey there,
for some unknown reason my copy of indesign (purchased online) doesnt have these pdf presets. is there somewhere one can download them? thanks,
buddygal
Anyone know how to set my new preset as the default choice in the list? I am always having to select my new preset from the list insetad of having it be the default.
Thanks!
Timothy,
I don’t think that there is a way to set up a default. However, from my testing, the choice is “sticky.” Whatever you chose last is chosen again for the next new file. And it seems to remember the last setting you used on the same file.
Yes, OK. Thanks Steve.
This works well. But our tests have also shown that once you quit and restart the ‘Stickyness’ is gone and the default is back. Not a big deal, really. But there should be a switch for this I think.
Timothy,
Somehow I’m imagining that that’s scriptable, but I’m not a scripter so I don’t know. Seems like you could create a script which would launch File > Export > Adobe PDF and select a preset.
Steve,
I’m not really a scripter either. I know a little but not enough to do what you suggest, although it does make sense as a possibility. Thanks for the replies.
[...] LINK [...]
I’ve read many articles about this topic, most of them very long. The next time I was saving PDFs, doubt still lingered in my mind about which option to choose.
You have simplified the concepts and have helped me to make better ouput choices. Thanks.
Sevag
http://www.mind2print.com
[...] My other two postings about PDF presets—Choosing the Right PDF Preset and Creating PDF: Export or Use Distiller were very popular, based on the number of comments. I had promised a third posting on customizing PDF presets, but it got delayed. Here it is, better late than never! [...]
Hi,
I use the settings PDF/X-1a:2001 .
I am having problems when I do the checking on Acrobat.
Even when all my images have more than 300 dpi of effective resolution in InDesign, I get some bizarre comments when doing the checking in Acrobat as:
Continuous tone resolution lower than specified: • Color image 330.577×528.522pt 250689/89.775ppi CMYK transparent.
And after that it shows me a part of an image whose effective resolution is 400ppi in InDesign.
Why?????
Thanks…
Hi, i got a question and hope to get help here. Our company has a pc and Mac. When I export inDesign files to pdf(to send for print), the pc exports the image nicely but the Mac seems to degrade the quality, curves and slant lines starts to pixelate. Sometimes the pdfs placed in inDesign also has erros when exported. I dun encounter this when i export n PC. the thing is the file has be done in Mac and i really do not want to bring it back to pc..
I have checked that the settings to conver to pdf are the same with those in the pc.
Any help is appreciated.
Hi. I’m exporting an InDesign document into PDF. I’m exporting it as Press Quality. I was just wondering about the size. If I package the InDesign document, it comes to about 27 MB. After exporting to Press Quality PDF, it’s about 3 MB. Is this about the expected size for a high-resolution PDF? Hope you can help. Thanks!
Not bad, it really can occur
You have so much spam in here.. (
I’m new to InDesign and found myself screaming in the last hour trying to do a very simple task (or at least I thought it was simple). I want to export a PDF from InDesign and make comments in Acrobat Reader 8 on the Mac…
I have tried different security settings and I still see Comments not allowed in the document. What is the delio? Please help.
Moca,
You can’t add comments in Adobe Reader 8 (the free product) unless its been “enabled” by Acrobat 8 Professional.
It has nothing at all about any PDF presets or security settings.