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• • June 13, 2010 at 7:58 pm #56026
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Hi

    I've been using indesign for several years but I'm completely self taught and know nothing about print and only a little about the jargon. I'm a landscape architecture student trying to get a design project completed and printed.

    I have an indesign file (CS4) with 20 A3 pages using two masters. The file is full of all sorts of images (placed and linked). jpeg, tif, pdf, psd, ai etc etc. Some are hand drawn and scanned then placed, some generated in illustrator, some are photos from my camera, most are edited in someway by photoshop or illustrator. Its fair to say I don't know much about RGB or CYMK or anything related. In indesign I have made use of the effects especially transparency, multiply, colour dodge and drop shadows. The file also contains a lot of text.

    Preflight check is all ok. Come to export to pdf (all 20pages) and it processes through to about page 15 and then stops producing an error “Failed to Export the pdf file.” On some attempts there is a warning on the summary tab of the export pdf options that reads “The preset specifies source profiles that don't match the current color settings file. Profiles specified by the colour settings file will be used” I wonder if this has something to do with it based on some other forums related to export failings but it could be completely unrelated… I have no idea.

    What I do know is, if I chose to only export a limited range of pages, then exporting is more likely to succeed. So I've managed to export all 20 pages in four steps: Page 1-14, 15-16, 17-18, 19-20. The odd thing is I couldn't pdf some pages at all on this computer that I usually work on but if I switch to my home computer or another school computer I can pdf those pages but not others. So I managed to get the project printed in time for hand in but not without a scowl from the lady at the print shop for giving her four pdf files. But I still want to have this project in one file so I can email it to other people.

    Since having these problems and spending hours trawling help forums, I have tried converting and relinking all my images into either pef, jpeg or tif but it still glitches on page 15. I've removed a lot of fancy effects like color dodge and multiply. I've tried different options when exporting to pdf like color conversion set to destination and include all RGB and tagged source profiles. Not that I know what any of that means…

    Any suggestions at all….

  • June 13, 2010 at 8:32 pm #56028
    Colin Flashman

    Member

    the colour conversion stuff won't do a thing to resolve the issue. however, i do think the issue could be this:

    https://kb2.adobe.com/cps/406/k…..06643.html

    can tell you though you're doing the right thing by isolating the problem only to one page. do you have a copy of adobe acrobat professional? if so, any amount of PDFs can be combined into one by using the file/combine/merge files into single pdf option. otherwise if its just reader, no such luck and back to working out the problem in indesign.

    i'm amazed that the print shop lady “scowled” at you for giving her four pdf files… is that all? i used to work for a bureau which charged a “file access fee” for each file we opened and then a standard rate for the following pages, and i'm sure there are dozens of places which still do. four files isn't much in that environment, believe me!

  • June 14, 2010 at 4:18 pm #56040
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Thanks for the suggestions.

    My computer is up to date and I can only assume the school computers are too.

    The downsampling thing does sounds like it might be the solution. I tried disabling the downsampling as part of the export to pdf process but it still failed on about page 14. So now I'm going through all 120 files in my links folder to resample and resize them in photoshop and see if that works. A lot of the links are pdf, does it make sense to adjust these ones in photoshop and save as jpeg or leave as pdf?

    Once I've adjusted the original files, am I then going to have to reposition them and resize them in their frames in indesign? Surely this can't be a standard “work flow” if thats what you call it. What I mean is, people who make books and magazines with indeisgn won't be adjusting the all their original files to suit the size required in indesign because that would defeat the indesign feature of resizing images and take ages right?

    any other ideas?

  • June 14, 2010 at 7:25 pm #56041
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    ah ha. Success. I adjusted the image size and dpi as suggested by:

    https://kb2.adobe.com/cps/406/k…..06643.html

    solution three.

    To do this I opened each of the 120 files in photoshop from my packaged links folder so I wasn't altering the original images saved elsewhere. Edit>image size, checked scale styles, constrain proportions, and resample image. Then I changed the dpi to 200 (capacity of school printers) and found out the appoximate size i need in my indesign layout, back to photoshop to adjust the width or height of the image to suit. Save file. update in indesign. It took several hours and part way through I tested the export to pdf function but it still failed. It wasn't until I had altered every one of the 120 images that the export worked.

    My links folder was 419MB its now 150MB so that shows you how much of a difference the resizing made. My next problem is the resulting pdf is 63MB which is too big to email…do I try the export again with different settings or somehow compress the pdf?

  • June 15, 2010 at 12:39 am #56043
    Roland

    Member

    Your computers might be up-to-date, but you were apparently running into memory issues. Add more memory and the problems ought to go away without needing to resize every image every time you want to export a PDF (in my experience 4GB is a minimum, 6 or 8 will suffice, but if you use Windows you'll need a 64-bit OS to take advantage of more than 3GB of RAM).

    As for compressing the PDF: if you use Acrobat Pro, you can go to Document > Reduce File Size and that can make the file smaller but your milage will vary. Optionally, if the file stays too big to email and you don't want to use a service like FileMail.com (a site that'll let you send large files for free) you could print the PDF using a setting like “High Quality Print”. That tends to get much smaller files than an InDesign exported PDF using the same settings.

  • June 15, 2010 at 4:20 am #56049
    Colin Flashman

    Member

    if emailing the pdf for others to see on-screen only, i'd suggest using the adobe pdf export preset titled “smallest file size”. all the pics will be resampled and won't look as good as the print-ready pdf, but should be light enough to email.

    otherwise, try using one of the many free FTP options such as yousendit.com (i'm not a spokesperson for 'em, its the only one i can think of at the moment).

  • June 15, 2010 at 3:41 pm #56066
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Reduce file size in Adobe Acrobat took it from 63MB to 33MB

    Export using Small File Size option instead of High Quality Print made a 23MB file

    Reduce file size in Adobe Acrobat took it from 23MB to 17.5MB

    Awesome reduction. I'll use a file transfer website just in case 17.5MB still chokes their inbox.

    Thanks for all your suggestions.

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