The Case of the Jaggy Image Contest Answer and Winner

Mike Rankin

7

It’s time to reveal the solution—and the winner—for this month’s InDesignSecrets contest!

Here’s the scenario: 

You open an InDesign document. On one page of the document, there are three frames, each containing the same placed image. In two of the frames, the image looks smooth and high-res. But in the third, it looks jaggy and low-res.

You check the Links panel and confirm that all three frames contain the same image.

And it’s scaled the same in each. You’ve also seen a PDF exported from this document and all the images look high-res in the PDF.

Why does one of the placed images look low-res in the InDesign layout?

The answer is that someone changed the Display Performance setting for that image to Typical Display (Object > Display Performance > Typical Display).

And in Display Performance preferences, the Typical setting displays the low-res proxy for both Vector Graphics and Raster Images.

Also in order for this to happen, Allow Object-Level Display Settings must be turned on in the View menu (it is by default).

And finally, note that the object-level display setting will only be in effect until you close the document, unless you go to Preferences and turn on Preserve Object-Level Display Settings (off by default).

And there’s a catch: you need to also do something else, then save the file and close it for the display setting to be preserved. Special thanks to Branislav Milic for pointing that out!

And the winner of this contest is…

Kelli Erb

Kelli wins 3 months access to videos of any 2 days of CreativePro Week 2018.

Thanks to everyone who entered, and be on the lookout for another contest with a new great prize next month!