80
Technique
InDesign CS4
Master
PDF exports
Adobe instructor
Tony Harmer shows you
how to create PDFs for
every occasion
With PDF workflows established almost everywhere,
the days of packaging and sending out your source files should
really be a thing of the past. Additionally, we should all be thinking
about making our content available digitally, and PDF is a reliable
way of doing so. Almost every computer has Acrobat or Reader
software, so exporting to PDF is a good way to ensure your
document can be viewed wherever it ends up. But which settings
should you use? What do the standards mean? And what do you
need to do first?
All will be revealed in this tutorial, which takes you
through the steps involved in selecting the correct settings for your
PDF, checking fonts and images and, finally, exporting the
completed file ready to be viewed by the world.
01
Before you make your PDF, there are
a few things you need to do. First, remove any
unused colours from your document the
Swatches Panel menu has a Select All Unused
command, which you can follow by clicking the
Trash icon in the same panel. If youve
imported anything from Microsoft Word, its
also worth editing that or replacing its colours
with colours from InDesign.
Tony Harmer
An Adobe
Certified Instructor
who holds over 40
certifications, and
chapter leader for
the London and
Cardiff InDesign
User Groups,
Harmers 4T podcast
is available on iTunes
and at his site, www.
tonyharmer.co.uk
Time needed
5-15 minutes
Computer Arts September 2009
ART166.tut_indesign 64
Skills
Choose a
Transparency
Blend Space
Select
appropriate
standards
Create your own
PDF settings
02
Before final output, its a
good idea to switch to InDesign
CS4s Printing and Proofing
workspace. Not only does this
ensure that the Preflight panel is
handy, but you might also want to
use the Separations and Flattener
previews to check your work.
03
Ensure fonts in your
document are present and can be
embedded. If youre using fonts from a
reliable vendor then this shouldnt be an
issue missing fonts and those that
cant be embedded are picked up by the
default Basic preflight profile in
InDesign CS4, so you should know if
theres a problem.
04
If you think its at all likely that
youll use an older PDF standard, then
its good practice to put any vector art,
text or objects with transparency in a
layer above any that contain bitmap
images. In fact, its probably best to do
this anyway, if you can.
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05
Youll then need to tell
InDesign if the resulting PDF is intended
for screen or print to let it know how to
handle any transparency blending. Go to
Edit>Transparency Blend Space. Choose
Document CMYK for print output or
Document RGB for screen.
81
07
InDesign has a range of preset PDF settings for
common types of output: High Quality Print for output to your
desktop printer, Smallest File Size for the web or email and Press
Quality, which is meant to be for prepress printing, although
strangely enough it doesnt have any bleed. Its only good as a
starting point, if anything, and that really goes for all three of
these options.
06
Youre now ready to start
making your PDF. Its little known that
you dont have to go through the Export
dialog to create a PDF the Adobe PDF
Presets menu item in the File menu gets
you there a few seconds quicker.
09
08
The subset PDF/X-1a:2001 is
designed for CMYK-only workflows and
is widely accepted; you can pretty much
send one of these anywhere in the world
and itll print reliably. As with all of the
PDF/X standards, font embedding is
required - hence the earlier check.
11
Your output intent is critical
because it defines the ink coverage. CMYK
can vary, and specifying an intent says which
flavour you planned for. For sheet-fed printing
in Europe on coated stock, choose FOGRA39,
while for uncoated stock FOGRA27 is the best
catch-all solution. You can find out more at
the Ghent PDF Workgroup (www.gwg.org).
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ART166.tut_indesign 65
If youre using a colourmanaged workflow, the subset
PDF/X-3:2002 might be the best
solution (as long as its usable by your
print service provider.) Youll be able to
work with RGB images in Photoshop and
use the same images in InDesign;
conversion will take place at the end of
the workflow.
10
If your print provider is using the Adobe PDF Print
Engine, then you could use PDF/X-4 files. These may contain
live transparency, which is flattened at the end of the workflow,
enabling your provider to use the scheme that best suits them.
PDF/X-4 can also contain both colour-managed and
unmanaged images, as well as PDF layers, which can be useful
for alternative versions and localisation.
12
If you make a modification to
any of the presets (such as adding bleed)
then you can save that preset by clicking
the button at the bottom-right corner of
the dialog box. This will be available
inside InDesign and (with the exception
of PDF/X-4) inside Acrobat Distiller too.
13
If youre trying to make a file as small as possible
for web deployment or sending over email, then you can
make a leaner PDF by changing the downsampling to 72ppi,
if you think it wont be viewed at over 100% magnification. If
you use Acrobat then you can also run the PDF Optimizer (in
the Advanced menu) to compress it further.
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