Do you have to flatten placed PSD's when going to print?

[mistercitizen]

As Indesign has the functionality to place unflattened PSD's, does that mean you can go to press with your document, without havint to flatten you PSD files?

Thanks.

 

[Genimuse]

You don't have to flatten them before importing them, no. ID will perform all the layer effects and such that your Photoshop file uses. When it's ready to print it will flatten the whole composite thing for printing. It's like a layout extension of Photoshop, in a sense. For my money, it's the single coolest thing that ID can do.

 

[GrafxKitten]

I'm no pro on ID but I've experienced problems going with unflattened PSD's into ID when trying to go to print. The ripped file did not work properly. Some files ripped without issue while others did not, I'd be cautious here.

~GK

 

[Genimuse]

I had problems with it, too, until I started printed out through Distiller, which seemed to fix the problems.

ID native files and ID's output as PDF both seem to contain Postscript that some RIPs just hate. Since switching to Distiller I've not had a problem (though I'll grant that it could be coincidence).

 

[MarcusStringer]

In my opinion,

Going through Distiller is the only way to produce quality PDFs.
It just cleans up and picks up any errors in the Postscript file.

From what I've been reading in these forums, I would say 80% of the problems people have with PDFs have been because they are using the export or save as etc. instead of Printing to Postscript file then running through Distiller.

Just because a Program has that feature doesn't mean it's better than the old way.

That's my little rant for the day...

Marcus

http://www.midlandtypesetters.com.au