We recently upgraded to Adobe InDesign CS2 from CS1, which has caused some confusion regarding PDF settings.
We send the paper to the printer as a PDF file, ebook quality. However, CS2 does not have an ebook setting.
There is a "press quality" setting intended for "pre-press" work.
That seems to be the most likely setting to use for sending this off to another printer, but I wanted to double check on here since surely other newspapers have some advice.
What do you all use if you use CS2 and convert to PDF?
Thanks.
Roy Waggoner
Sterling College Stir
http://stir.sterling.edu
Responses
Stephen, The Pacer, 10/19/2005, 10:42:26 AM
Whatever you do, don't use eBook. It will cause your images to lose quality. Here is the preset we use for our local Gannet paper. Everything turns out as expected. If anyone has changes, let me know.
General
Pages: All
Spreads: Off
Compatibility: Acrobat 4 (PDF 1.3)
Standards Compliance: None
Generate Thumbnails: Off
Optimize PDF: On
View PDF after Exporting: Off
Create Acrobat Layers: N/A
Include Bookmarks: Off
Include Hyperlinks: Off
Export Nonprinting Objects: Off
Export Visible Guides and Baseline Grids: Off
Include eBook Tags: Off
Include Interactive Elements: Off
Multimedia: N/A
Compression
Color Images
Bicubic Downsample at: 300 DPI
for images above: 450 DPI
Compression: Automatic
Tile Size: N/A
Quality: Maximum
Grayscale Images
Bicubic Downsample at: 300 DPI
for images above: 450 DPI
Compression: Automatic
Tile Size: N/A
Quality: Maximum
Monochrome Images
Bicubic Downsample at: 1200 DPI
for images above: 1800 DPI
Compression: CCITT Group 4
Compress Text and Line Art: On
Crop Image Data to Frames: Off
Marks & Bleeds
Crop Marks: Off
Bleed Marks: Off
Registration Marks: Off
Color Bars: Off
Page Information: Off
Page Mark Type: Default
Weight: 0.25 pt
Offset: 0.0833 in
Use Document Bleed Settings: Off
Bleed Top: 0 in
Bleed Bottom: 0 in
Bleed Left: 0 in
Bleed Right: 0 in
Include Slug Area: Off
Advanced
Color: CMYK
Destination Profile: N/A
Include ICC Profiles: N/A
Simulate Overprint: Off
Output Intent Profile: N/A
Subset Fonts Below: 100%
Omit PDF: Off
Omit EPS: Off
Omit Bitmap Images: Off
Transparency Flattener Preset: [High Resolution]
Ignore Spread Overrides: Off
Security
N/A
Roy, 10/19/2005, 7:49:03 PM
Interesting. Thanks for the information. We actually get printed as part of the town newsper (small town and small college), and they told us to send things to them in ebook format. But, we don't have that option in CS2. I was wondering why it was always so frustrating trying trying to get images to print clearly. Hopefully, it was because it was in ebook format.
Stephen, 10/20/2005, 6:18:02 PM
The eBook format is optimized for viewing on screen. Think of it like having a 72 DPI image go to press. It will look fine on screen, but cruddy when it comes off the press. The benefit of eBook format is that it is small enough to email or quick download (which might be why they want it this way).
Roy Waggoner, 10/26/2005, 10:30:05 AM
Well, we tried the settings today and had an issue in that when we emailed it to our printer/publisher, they could not print out the PDF.
They could view it fine on screen, but when they tried to print it, it would not print; they received a Postscript error. We are on Windows, while they are on Mac. We have Indesign CS2 with Acrobat 7. They have Quark and Acrobat 4 I believe (I set the compatibility with 4 like I have been told and like you advised as well).
What could be causing this issue? We did not have a problem when we were on CS1 and used the export to PDF option.
We have the output tab section labeled "color conversion" set to "no color conversion." Is that correct? We want their color settings to be what is used (not that we even use color since it is all black and white).
In the advanced tab, what does OPI mean?
I read elsewhere that apparently there may be a problem with Indesign's direct PDF output and its compatibility with Postscript, but I have not really found out more info. What is the OPI stuff about? We have none of that checked. Should we?
Do you think this problem would be solved by converting directly in Acrobat Distiller? Unlike when you use the export to PDF option in Indesign, in Distiller it converts to a PostScript file first. Could not having it convert first have caused the PostScript file problem?
Roy Waggoner, 10/26/2005, 1:05:18 PM
Of course, after I wrote my updated post, I just found a new problem. Since we had to just print it out here this time and physically take the pages to our printer due to the PostScript problem, I was informed that we did not have screens set up, the dots per inch setting that is low enough for newspaper.
How do you do that? I could get it set up for the entire page, but the problem is, it screened the text as well.
I have looked all over in InDesign and in Acrobat Distiller trying to figure this out. All I could find was a resolution setting in Distiller, but that only screened the entire page. How on Earth do you screen the images only? We don't want the line art to be gray...
Ibrahim, 3/21/2006, 1:17:45 PM
How to include hyperlinks in the print preset(manually created) to export as a postscript file.
But when we export as PDF it contains Hyperlink option and more other options.
if any solution for this.... response me.
