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Exporting to pdf 7

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emkemner

Technical User
Oct 6, 2003
59
US
Hi I'm rather new to InDesign just wandering is there a way to export a document to grey scale?
 
That's a good question but as far as I can see, it's not possible to go to PDF as greyscale. You'd have to convert everything in it's native progam and re-import.

Copy all files to a new folder and then go through and greyscale them and save them as the same name as they were. That way all you'd have to do is fix the links instead of having to rebuild the whole thing. Other than that, I don't think there's a way. Sorry!

 
I have the same problem before. someone told me that it has to do with the printer you setup with not the program itself. so if you can choose a black and white printer in chooser or printer utility, and make sure that in Indesign, you select the same black and white printer. it should work

(I don't have a black and white printer under my printer utility, so I haven't had any luck so far. but good luck!)
 
I expect a mono or modified PPD could be used to produce a greyscale PS file for distilling.

Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.
 
Can anyone tell me if it is possible to change the entire document to B&W? I can't change the photos. I am working on a deadline, and the newspaper needs this AD in B&W, but I can't convert it! Help please.
 
lychi is on the right track. There are some elements that will not export in grayscale with this method of printing to a virutal black and white postscript printer. To overcome this, you should select everything in your document and set the transparency to 99%. This makes InDesign resample everything to perfectly match the grayscale PPD.

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?
 
If you have full Acrobat, you can print a postscript file by going to Print In ID.

Select Postscript as the printer and Adobe PDF as the PPD. Under Output in the pront window, select Composite grayscale in the Color menu. Save the postscript file and run that through Distiller.
 
I agree with the above posts, printing to a post script would be the only way, or saving it as a pdf then converting it to a grayscale in Photoshop and then saving itas a pdf.
 
So are you all saying that BigJohnD had it right back in July of 2004? [bigsmile]

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?
 
I can easily supply a mono PPD…

Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.
 
I'm also printing stuff to Adobe Distiller when I want a grayscale output. Converting all elements to grayscale doesn't work for me at all.
But when I print something like this, the output is way too dark and transparency is much more opaque then in ID. I cannot set color management profile in Print... dialogue - the only option is "Let InDesign determine colors".

Another question - is it OK to make a looseless compressed raster image for prepress instead of postscript? Like - exporting it correctly to CMYK pdf and consequently make a grayscale TIFF in Photoshop...
 
2much4u said:
Another question - is it OK to make a looseless compressed raster image for prepress instead of postscript? Like - exporting it correctly to CMYK pdf and consequently make a grayscale TIFF in Photoshop...

It can be done, and in some cases it might be the only non time consuming solution. But there's one major drop back about this solution. Rasterizing a pdf will also rasterize the text. So instead of printing text @ 1200 dpi (standard res for text and vector graphic) your text will get rasterized as an image @ 300 dpi. And saving your image at say 600 ppi, won't do you any good, as the RIP probably will downsample to 300 anyway.

But if you're willing to live with the result (most normal human beings won't notice) go for it.
 
Creating a Greyscale .pdf is not difficult.

Select Adobe PDF as your printer. Change the Output preferences to Greyscale. Make any other preference changes desired.

Then print. Name the file and select the directory.
 
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