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editing press ready PDF

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    • September 2, 2011 at 1:02 am #60427
      Nigel Mitchell
      Member

      I have a customer who wants to take a press ready PDf into Indesign CS5 in some form so that they can edit the file. I didn't think this could be done and the only way i have ever heard this done is through Pitstop software. Could somebody help??

    • September 2, 2011 at 1:42 am #60429
      Theunis De Jong
      Member

      InDesign is not a PDF editor. (Adobe really needs to sell t-shirts with that statement.)

      Safest you can do is NOT EDITING a press-ready PDF, and use the original document to re-create it. You never know what side-effects post-editing has — I'm thinking of transparency, font embedding, color profiles, and lots of other things I should not think of.

      Second best is to use dedicated PDF editing software — which is not, I repeat not one of InDesign, Illustrator, or Acrobat Pro itself. Pitstop does a better job.

      Last best is place the PDF in an InDesign document and paste white rectangles over the errors, so you can type in new text. Obviously, one would only do this when in real dire need of a solution.

    • September 2, 2011 at 2:05 am #60431
      Nigel Mitchell
      Member

      Thanks for the confirmation and i appreciate your comments

    • September 2, 2011 at 5:42 am #60432
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Just for an upvote. I'll back Jongware's sentiments of not editing PDFs once created. PDFs are final files, the original file should be located where possible.

    • September 2, 2011 at 9:26 pm #60435
      Colin Flashman
      Member

      To answer the OP, Jongware is right – indesign is not a PDF editor. the Pitstop software the OP mentions is made by Enfocus called Pitstop Professional (though they make other software too). However, this is an ACROBAT plug-in, not indesign.

      In a perfect world, i'd agree too that final art PDFs should not be edited once created… in a perfect world.

      Sadly, much of my work is spent using Pitstop whilst in Acrobat to do just that – edit PDFs supplied by clients to edit potential prepress issues. This is purely because artwork was supplied as PDF and the rep/client cannot or will not supply native files, so editing PDFs the only option.

    • September 5, 2011 at 1:34 am #60442
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I don't work in prepress anymore, but we never edited a clients PDF without their consent or their sign off on supplied proofs. It's just too risky.

      If you do edit a client's PDF make sure you talk to them about that issue and see if they can resolve it and supply a new PDF. If not, then any fixes from your end you should be supplying them with proofs that they can sign off on.

      One of our print providers tries to supply us with lo-res PDF of the PDF file I sent over, which is something I can't sign off on. If the printers want me to sign off on something they need to send me physical proofs that have gone through their system.

      Nothing else will do.

    • September 15, 2011 at 8:36 am #60533
      Mr.Screens
      Member

      One more option nobody has mentioned yet: a plug-in for InDesign that will convert a PDF to an editable InDesign file.

      https://recosoft.com/products/p…../index.htm

      Certainly worth a free trial to test it on your client's file.

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