Images losing resolution/quality when placed in Indesign 1

[Martii]

I get pdf files from clients for advertising purposes. When I place in Indesign, some of the disclaimer information (the small print) ususally 8pt goes fuzzy and can not be read.

 

[jmgalvin]

I'm assuming the pdfs are properly done - at Acrobat "press" quality with embeddded fonts.

First go to view menu and make sure display quality is set to high.

Second look at your work at its actual size - so that an 8.5 in wide page is actually 8.5 in on your monitor. You might have to adjust the zoom to get this depending on monitor resolution. On my 1680 X 1050 monitor I need to zoom to 133%.

Third, run a quick print and see how that looks. If it's ok, the work will print fine.

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4

 

[Martii]

I have done that. When the pages are printed for proof, from a pdf) print is grainy and also the last publication, the actual publication had "grainy" type on the advertisements. I save the originals at 300. The image comes to me as 8.5 x 11 but actual size in publication is 8 x 10.83. Am I losing something there?

Thanks so much

 

[Ekwoman]

Is the type rasterized (i.e. how/where did you create the PDF)? You say the "original" is 300 dpi...since PDFs don't have resolution, but rather the images in a PDF do, it sounds like you've created the PDFs in Photoshop? I'm not sure if you have control over the PDF creation (sounds like you receive them from clients), but if there is type, it is best to leave it as type. The other problem is if your type is screened...at small sizes the size of the screen may be distorting the appearance of the type. Can you provide a sample of one of the PDFs? Thanks!

 

[Martii]

How would I attach?

 

[jmgalvin]

Marti: you said "I save the originals at 300". What are you saving them in?

As Ekwoman said, if you're rasterizing text at 300 dpi it will look awful. Text should never be rasterized unless absolutely impossible to avoid. If text is rasterized it should be at a minimum of 1200 dpi.

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4

 

[Martii]

So what you are telling me is that when an ad is sent to me in pdf form, in order to place full page in Indesign, I need to save it as a 1200 dpi tiff file? This particular ad is almost 100% text inside text boxes. Is there a different method to use for converting pdf's for placement in Indesign?

Thanks so much for all of your help. I've struggled with all of this.

 

[jmgalvin]

All you have to do is place the pdf in the indesign doc. There is no reason, and it's bad practice to change to any other format.

If you have to scale it smaller just use indesign's scaling features to reduce it.

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4

 

[Martii]

But...the ad is black and white...I've applied a color to all of the other images and you can not place a color swatch over this pdf.

 

[jmgalvin]

I would assume that, if the advertiser wanted a color ad, they would have sent a color ad.

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4

 

[Martii]

We work on a two color publication...black is not one of the colors.

 

[boraparis]

I think there are could be at least 2 possibilities.
1) if pdf was built with spot color, shadow overlappes text and distilled with pdf 1.3
Open in Acrobat- File- Document Properties- Description and figure out if it's PDF Version 1.3 - that's it
or
2) most possible- again deep shadow overlapping text and distiller rasterized
text
What to do: apple-delete and ask for new one!