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• • October 12, 2010 at 8:21 am #57333
    Kirk Dickinson

    Member

    I needed to use a feature that I thought was there, but aparently removed. Export Comps to PDF is not in CS5. Aparently I hadn't used it in a while because it is gone from CS4 also. In efforts to get the same desired effect, I played around with using the Bridge output and wasn't happy with the results. Not happy with it at all. I Exported individual comps to PDF and then went to Bridge output and put them out to a PDF, my beautiful fonts that were present in the PDF's were thunked down to ugly JPG's. Plus Bridge insists on adding an extra margin even though I have margins set to “O”.

    

    Next try:

    Export Comps to JPG high res, place in Power Point, export to PDF. FAIL. Ugly JPG artifacting.

    Attempt 3:

    Export Layer Comps to files using PDF Format,

    In Acrobat, combine all 18 separate files into one.

    Optimize PDF

    Result: PDF looks good, but is 83 MB which is crazy huge for an 18 page PDF and can't be shared on the internet.

    Attempt 4:

    Start a new 18 page project in InDesign.

    Place the PSD on every single page and the master.

    Go through the pages and turn only the layer on that I want, including only the background on the master page

    Export to PDF

    Result: PDF looks great, and it is only 1.1 MB

    That is the long way around, but probably gives the result that I would expect from Export Comps to PDF.

    Now, if could somehow find a way that InDesign would automatically place each Comp on a different page, or find a way to do this faster than going in to each and every linked PSD and turning layers on and off, I would be set to go.

    Is this possible?

  • October 12, 2010 at 8:33 am #57334
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Are you talking about export layer comps in Photoshop? I believe that functionality is still there.

    Or are you talking about a layer comps feature in InDesign? There is a layer comps plug-in from dtptools.com, but not directly in InDesign.

  • October 12, 2010 at 9:21 am #57335
    Kirk Dickinson

    Member

    David,

    I am talking export comps from Photoshop. It is still there, but there used to be a feature that said: “Export Comps to PDF” and it would put all Comps in a single PDF file.

    I can simulate the same process by using ID, but it takes a while and wouldn't be very practical if I got a lot of pages.

    Thanks,

    Kirk

  • October 13, 2010 at 1:29 pm #57354
    Bob Levine

    Participant

    The Photoshop team have removed some of the plugin but many are still available. Check out this KB article. https://kb2.adobe.com/cps/405/k…..05072.html

    There are links to Win and Mac versions of additional plugins.

  • October 13, 2010 at 1:51 pm #57356
    Kirk Dickinson

    Member

    Thanks Bob, I will check that out.

    Kirk

  • October 13, 2010 at 1:57 pm #57357
    Kirk Dickinson

    Member

    I checked that out and it didn't have the “Export Comps to PDF” in it. I guess that is gone now. I am trying to figure out how to do it with InDesign in a quicker way than manually.

    Kirk

  • October 13, 2010 at 8:54 pm #57360
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    I don't recall an “export comps to pdf,” but perhaps it was there. However, you can pretty easily do the same thing in Photoshop CS5 by choosing File > Scripts > Layer Comps to Files. If you get multiple pdf files, you can easily merge them in Acrobat.

  • October 14, 2010 at 9:44 pm #57381
    Kirk Dickinson

    Member

    David, did you read my first post where it said:

    Attempt 3:

    Export Layer Comps to files using PDF Format,

    In Acrobat, combine all 18 separate files into one.

    Optimize PDF

    Result: PDF looks good, but is 83 MB which is crazy huge for an 18 page PDF and can't be shared on the internet.

    The merged files are too large to be usable.

    Kirk

  • October 14, 2010 at 9:54 pm #57382
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Kirk, the only answer to that is to change your PDF output (or optimization) settings. If your file was that large, your file must be too high-resolution, or you're using too high a jpeg quality or something. That's the tradeoff… but you're right, an 18-page pdf shouldn't be that large.

    I don't see why you think InDesign would be able to do this differently.

  • October 15, 2010 at 1:47 pm #57397
    Kirk Dickinson

    Member

    David,

    Thank you for replying, you said:

    I don't see why you think InDesign would be able to do this differently.

    Well, I may have decided that, because I tried it. :)

    In my attempt to work around the problem, I tried several different things. Below are two:

    Attempt 3:

    Export Layer Comps to files using PDF Format,

    In Acrobat, combine all 18 separate files into one.

    Optimize PDF

    Result: PDF looks good, but is 83 MB which is crazy huge for an 18 page PDF and can't be shared on the internet.

    Attempt 4:

    Start a new 18 page project in InDesign.

    Place the PSD on every single page and the master.

    Go through the pages and turn only the layer on that I want, including only the background on the master page

    Export to PDF

    Result: PDF looks great, and it is only 1.1 MB

    I just wondered if there was any way to automate the placement of the comps so it isn't as time consuming.

    Thanks,

    Kirk

  • October 15, 2010 at 1:56 pm #57398
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Kirk, you and I are using different terminology and talking about different things, I think.

    My point is that if you set up your layer comps in Photoshop properly and then used the script, and then used Acrobat to merge optimize properly, you would get the same results as you did from InDesign. That's all.

    But no, I don't think there is any better way to automate this.

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