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Illustration by Mark Thornicroft

[email protected]

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Tutorial

PART TWO: PDFs

INDESIGN 2.0
Producing PDFs for print is
now easier than ever, thanks
to InDesign. Here we look
at the do’s and don’ts,
preflighting and editing with
Enfocus PitStop, and
handling transparency

Last issue, we looked at using InDesign with

Photoshop and Illustrator; this month, we turn to
the almighty PDF. Incredibly, Adobe’s Acrobat and
its Portable Document Format have been with us
almost ten years. Despite such humble beginnings,
the PDF is now an essential instrument for placing
format-rich documents on the Web, as well as
generating documents for print. In this tutorial,
we’re focusing on the PDF’s latter strengths. The
benefits are obvious – creating one compact self-
contained document, with all fonts, scans and
logos embedded, rather than a plethora of
individual files (think possible re-runs, font
substitution, corrupt images, and so forth).
We’ve included a brief overview of Enfocus
PitStop to show how you can ‘beef up’ the
preflighting of your PDFs, catching problems such
as low-res images and LAB colour that InDesign’s
own preflighting would otherwise miss.
We’ve chosen the imagery for this tutorial
carefully – start merrily producing PDFs without
checking the content at your peril. Follow the tried-
and-tested methods coming up, though, and they’ll
go a long way to assuring dependable results.
Talk to your service provider and ask them what
settings you should use, and always remember to
sign off a digital proof – preferably pre-RIP’d and
guaranteed to be the final printed version.

ON THE CD
You’ll find all the
images you need
to follow this
tutorial on the
coverdisc. Look inside the
folder Tutorial\InDesign for the
file BookAd.indd to begin. All
images are for personal use
and are not to be reproduced
elsewhere. Expertise from
Chris Gregory: 07967 372699,
[email protected].

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PART 1: HOW TO PART 2: YOUR INSIGHT

EXPORT TO PDF EXPORT OPTIONS STYLE-CONSCIOUS

Unfortunately, InDesign cannot use Distiller
To begin with, we’ll preflight and Next, we’ll define a style to ensure .joboption settings to produce your PDFs.
Nonetheless, once you’ve agreed the parameters
export to PDF using one of InDesign’s consistently correct output of our with your service provider and created a suitable
default settings PDFs for all our future work PDF Export style, you can easily distribute it to
ensure standardisation of your PDF production.

Open the document BookAd.indd. Choose

1 File>Preflight. The Summary informs us of 4 Re-open BookAd.indd and choose Export and
Under Marks & Bleeds, ensure that Bleed settings
possible problems with an RGB image and a spot
colour. Click Links and Images and Show Problems
[Press] as before. Under the General setting, the
main consideration is compatibility. The generally 6 have been entered (normally 3mm). Otherwise,
text and graphics in the PDF only show up to the
accepted format is Acrobat 4, although in time
Only to isolate the errant image – you could now exit Acrobat 5 will become more widely accepted. This is edge of the trimmed page. Registration and crop
Preflight and use Photoshop to convert it to CMYK. particularly important when it come to working with marks are also usually required.
transparency – but more on this topic later.

In the Colours and Inks section, we’ve identified

2 a spot colour sneaking through into our CMYK
Under Advanced settings, some important areas
workflow, which could get expensive. Once again,
exit Preflight and double-click on the offending colour
7 are Colour Conversion, Fonts and Transparency.
Under Colour, you can convert RGB images to CMYK
in the Swatches palette to convert it to a CMYK
and re-map spot colours to process with the Ink
process colour. (Alternatively, you could use Compression determines what method and
InDesign’s Ink Manager to remap the colour.) 5 resolution setting is used to downsample bitmap
images to minimise the size of your PDF. Bicubic
Manager. You can change the Subsetting threshold
to determine whether the complete character sets
of fonts are embedded or just the characters you’ve
Downsampling provides the best quality, by taking a
used (the subsets). A setting of 100 per cent will
weighted average of pixel colours before determining
generally result in a slightly smaller PDF. We’ll return
a new pixel colour value. The Automatic setting
to Transparency Flattener settings later in the tutorial.
applies either ZIP or JPEG compression to best suit
different image types. Compress Text and Line Art
uses lossless ZIP compression, while Crop Image
Data to Frames removes all hidden image
information to minimise the final file size.

Choose File>Export, Format>Adobe PDF,

3 Style>[Press] and click Export. This will produce
the highest-quality PDF using InDesign’s default INSIGHT
settings. View the PDF in Acrobat to check all is
present and correct. BLACK AND WHITE
It’s best not to specify white to overprint, as Click Save Style and name appropriately. You can
Acrobat won’t display it correctly unless you
choose View>Overprint Preview. Also, black
8 use Security settings to determine how editable
and reusable your PDF is. Turning on the options
overprinted doesn’t show underlying colours, so
create a rich black, such as 100%K/30%C, instead. above enables it to be printed, but not altered or re-
In such scenarios, budget for an accurate digital purposed. Enter a password in the second field, click
proof, preferably a pre-RIP’d PDF, and check it. Export and re-enter the password to create the PDF.

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INSIGHT
INSTALLING ENFOCUS Tutorial
PITSTOP PROFESSIONAL
When installing PitStop, you’ll be asked which
version of Acrobat you want to add it to. Ensure
that you select the full version, rather than a copy
of Acrobat Reader that’s likely to be residing on
your machine. To remove, drag it out of the
Plug-Ins folder inside the main Acrobat folder.

Now open the PDF in Acrobat 5.0. Note how a

9 number of the tools and menu commands
are greyed out and unavailable as a result of the
Security settings. Choose File>Document Security
and click Change Settings. After typing in your
password, you can turn off the necessary settings
Click on the View Wireframe button to help
to gain further access to the PDF.
15 view the PDF’s individual elements and speed
up screen redraw. Click on the border surrounding the
tinted panel and use the Inspector to change the line
weight. Try selecting different elements, gathering
information and making changes.
PART 3: 12 In the previous panel, we elected to catch
different image types below 250dpi and
PREFLIGHTING 600dpi. In this instance, we’re looking to catch RGB
AND EDITING and LAB images, two major bugbears in many PDF
workflows. Look through the settings and check out
Now we’ll create a PDF profile in the Help panel at the bottom for more information
Enfocus PitStop and give our PDF on the different options. Click OK when done.
a thorough checking

Now we’re going to use Photoshop to

16 change the colour mode of one of our images.
The heading image is in LAB mode. Select it with
Acrobat’s TouchUp Object tool (located under the
Under Checking, click Show Report to preflight TouchUp Text tool). Now Control-click and select
13 the PDF. A report is created listing all the
problems found based on the options you selected.
Edit Image, whereupon Photoshop will launch
and display the image.
Try experimenting with different settings to see the
difference in reporting. With Acrobat’s Hand tool,
click on an icon to the left of the Severity column to
After installing the Enfocus PitStop demo (see
10 boxout above), open Standard Layout.pdf in
Acrobat 5. To create a new preflight profile, choose
jump directly to that problem in the PDF.

Window>Show Preflight Panel. Click Managing and

New. Select Generic Press and click OK.

In Photoshop, the unmasked image opens at

17 its original resolution. We could now change
the mode to CMYK, do emergency retouching, and
so on. To demonstrate the power of this feature,
Choose Window>Show PitStop Inspector.
14 Click PitStop’s Select Objects tool. (Note that
PitStop’s tools and buttons are purple rather than
choose Image>Mode>Greyscale to radically alter the
image’s appearance in the PDF. (This feature is also
invaluable for repurposing PDFs – if you need urgent
Acrobat’s black). In the Inspector, click Image and access to a logo, for example.)
Properties tabs to check the resolution of each image.
In this case, we might let it go because it’s only a faint
background image. Click the left and right Navigator
arrows to move between items.
The PDF Profile Editor shows three columns.
11 The leftmost one shows the categories that you INSIGHT
can check. A ‘+’ indicates that at least one option has
been selected in a category. The middle column
THE PDF BYTES BACK
Font-encoding PDFs exported from InDesign
determines how the information is reported, while use double-byte encoding, which can cause
the third column determines whether to undertake ‘interesting’ interpretation by some RIPs. Printing
an action to fix the problem. a PostScript file via Acrobat Distiller is likely to
overcome this problem. You can also produce
a PDF in this manner if you have to specify a
particular media size (for use with imposition
software, for example).

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INSIGHT
CHECKLIST
When producing PDFs, your checklist should
include things like RGB/LAB images, embedded
fonts, image resolution, transparency, line
weights, spot colours, white ‘overprint’, rich
black and bleed settings. You could incorporate a
number of these into a PitStop preflight profile.

Using this technique, the text remains just

23 that – lovely, selectable text. Try highlighting,
copying or deleting the copy using Acrobat’s
TouchUp Text tool or PitStop’s text-editing tools.
Close and save the image from Photoshop
18 and return to Acrobat. The image is updated as
shown. Save the PDF to keep the changes. (Try these
Which one of these techniques works best for you
is something to determine between you and your
service provider (or visit www.adobe.co.uk for a
steps out on a PDF with an Illustrator image and Edit list of Adobe-authorised output centres).
Object to see yet more useful integration between
Acrobat and its sibling applications.)

PART 4: Technique 2: Within InDesign, choose

TRANSPARENCY 21 Edit>Transparency Flattener Styles, click New
and Force Text to Outlines ON. Click OK. Export to
Here we’ll examine alternative PDF a second time, choosing the style from the
techniques for handling one of Advanced options. In the PDF, as shown above,
New Adobe PostScript Level 3 RIPs will accept
InDesign’s more advanced features all text is now indeed made up of outlines. Use with
care with fine/serif text. 24 PDF 1.4 files with live transparency and handle
all the flattening at the RIP. To see this in action,
choose File>Export and select Compatibility>Acrobat
5.0 (note that the Transparency Flattener setting is no
longer required). The equivalent view with PitStop
shows the difference quite clearly.

FINAL STEP
And here are the pages together as a DPS. You’ve
Technique 3: Create a new layer in InDesign
22 called Text. Select text frames likely to overlap
transparency. Drag the blue square in the Layers
used the individual strengths of InDesign, Acrobat
and Photoshop, with some assistance from PitStop,
to maintain quality control and editability throughout
Open the document Transparent Layout palette to the Text layer. Export to PDF using the the creation of this spread. Now you could try
19 in InDesign. The Danger sign has two
transparent aspects to it: a Photoshop Layer Mask
default [Press] setting. experimenting with Export Styles and Preflight
profiles to see what best suits your workflow, and
and a dropshadow applied in InDesign. We’ll use then run tests with different transparency settings to
Transparency Flattener styles to convert the see what gives you the best results.
transparency into separate opaque areas prior to
exporting to PDF. Choose Edit>Transparency
Flattener Styles and click New to view the options.

Technique 1: Export to PDF with the [Press]

20 setting (this uses the default High Resolution
style). Open the PDF and click PitStop’s View
Wireframe button to see how the transparency
flattening has been created. Note the split of vector
and bitmap – text overlapping the dropshadow has
been converted to a series of bitmap images.

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