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Exporting PDF color issues

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    • February 6, 2020 at 6:19 pm #1227547
      Chris DeSantis
      Participant

      Hey everyone, I’m currently having issues with exporting PDFs from InDesign, but I’m not 100% how to actually word the question, so please excuse the rambling!

      For the past 7 or so years I’ve been working at job “A”, and have never had to worry about CMYK or RGB color profiles when exporting PDFs from InDesign. We’d download jpgs straight from Shutterstock (or wherever), plop them into an InDesign doc, hit export to PDF (usually using any one of the default presets without modifying them I don’t think), and be off to the races. I never had to worry about setting CMYK profiles, converting to CMYK or RGB in PS before placing in ID, etc. We’d regularly use the same images for web or print, design in ID for web or print, design in PS or AI and place into ID with no problems exporting to a PDF. I know it sounds crazy, but it just worked. Never had any problems with getting brochures printed, no red flags from printers, images viewed on the web were perfect, and our PDFs were always exported and printed just as vibrantly as they were onscreen.

      Now, recently I’ve moved on to job “B”, and on the new MacBook they gave me, all my settings are completely default and I can’t reproduce the same results as I had at job “A”. All my PDFs export with super washed out colors, presumably having something to do with the PDF conversion to a CMYK colorspace. I’m not sure if I’m just missing a simple setting to check or uncheck, or if there’s some “universal” color profile that just lets everything magically work together. I can select the “no color conversion” option in the output tab, which then views fine on screen because it preserves the RGB colorspace, but when printing I obviously still get the same washed out colors.

      I’ve spent the last 4 hours or so googling the issue, with absolutely no luck, which is why I’ve come here. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. It’s incredibly frustrating when it all worked so well together before, but now I’m at a complete standstill and have a ton of work to do! Again, apologies for the ramble, I just feel like I’m out of options.

      Thanks!

    • February 7, 2020 at 2:08 am #14323127
      Gert Verrept
      Member

      Maybe you could look for pdf/x4 settings. Then try to make the pdf again.

    • February 7, 2020 at 8:37 am #14323124
      Chris DeSantis
      Participant

      Hi Gert, I’ve tried every default pdf export setting there is. The only one that doesn’t give me the super washed out colors is the “High Quality Print” option, presumably because there is no color conversion associated with that print preset. I’ve even sent the file off to one of my other colleagues that still works at my old job and he can’t reproduce the same issues I’m having. Everything he sees on screen is the same as what the pdf exports as, which is obviously not what I’m getting.

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