That has solved the problem, thank you very much!   You'd think InDesign would automatically switch if you're exporting an RGB image, but apparently not. ... View more

Did you find a way around this? I'm having more or less exactly the same issue. Importing an RGB Illustrator file into InDesign, doing textual layout work, exporting as RGB image that is losing all of the original colour.   I realise obviously that InDesign is built around CMYK, but it appears that it won't do proper RGB image exports.   The only way I've found around it is to export the final InDesign file to a PDF in RGB, and then in Acrobat export that PDF into a jpeg. This appears to retain the correct colours. ... View more

Why oh why have they removed such fundamental functionality of data merge?? The fact that there is - for the moment - a relatively straightforward workaround is beside the point.   Presumably there is some alternative benefit that makes this change an upgrade somehow? Have the colons been replaced with a different character? ... View more

Did you find a solution to this? Nobody in their right mind wants floating toolbars constantly getting in the way. Why does Adobe forever insist on downgrading their software with every update. ... View more

That's disappointing to hear.   I did eventually speak to the company that makes Apogee, our printing software, and this was their reply:   "Around July 3rd, the ECO3 software service organization received feedback from various countries and clients that PDF files could no longer be rendered. Users encountered an error message "The document caused a processing problem. Please try to fix it with ap_FixErrorOnPDFSpecification" during the PDF rendering process.   Internal investigation revealed that this issue was caused by a flaw in Adobe InDesign 18.4. The suggested solution of processing the PDF files using the Apogee Preflight profile "ap_FixErrorOnPDFSpecification" unfortunately did not provide a comprehensive solution for all scenarios, as observed during testing.   In order to enable our customers to continue production, software fixes were released for our latest software solutions – Apogee, Amfortis, and Arkitex. (Version 12) These fixes were made available to our customers starting from July 31st.   ECO3 reported this problem to Adobe so that the root cause could be addressed. Meanwhile, an update for Adobe InDesign 18.5 has been made available that resolves the origin of the issue. Refer to Adobe InDesign's release notes: https://helpx.adobe.com/be_nl/indesign/kb/fixed-issues.html   ECO3 made every effort to resolve the problem, and it is evident that the issue is not the fault of ECO3 itself, as the cause can be traced back to Adobe InDesign."   So from all of that, I gather that Adobe thinks it has fixed the problem and is no longer looking into it, especially since it now continues to exist in v19.0 even though the problem has been reported to them. ... View more

Just in case you're curious about this topic, we've now spoken to Agfa (actually now a company called ECO3, after AGFA sold that side of the business recently).   They were aware of the problem and had issued a patch to Apogee to fix it between InDesign v18.4 and 18.5. We don't routinely update Apogee because it has a history of causing massive problems where none previously existed, so I wasn't aware of this patch. However, ECO3 also said that as far as they were aware the 18.5 update reverted the previous problems, which doesn't line up with our experience since we are still having the problem in 18.5 on the unpatched Apogee, so we'll talk to them some more and see what we can come up with together. ... View more

Yes, files generated from version 18.3 work without any problems.   I'm waiting for a response from Agfa at the moment, hopefully it won't take them too long to get back to me. Most of the error message in the screenshot I posted is standard language, it's just telling us where the problem is (everywhere, in this case). The actual error description is blank, it only shows a full stop at the end of a non-existent sentence, which I've never seen in any other error message. Distilling postscripted files from the initial PDF in Acrobat Distiller using exactly the same settings fixes the problem, which is a little strange since I'd always assumed the rendering engine is shared across the suite of applications. ... View more

Having gone back through different versions of InDesign, it appears that v18.4 was the update that introduced this bug. ... View more

Hello @Laubender  I have gone back through the latest versions of InDesign and discovered that 18.3 works as it always has, but 18.4 introduces the new PDF problem, so something changed with the way InDesign is rendering PDFs with that update. I'll submit a bug report, but I wanted to thank you for your suggestions again. ... View more

Hi @Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com that's very helpful, thank you. Do you know how they would go about contacting me (assuming they don't simply look into the issue without further contact)? Will it be on here or via email or something? ... View more

This is all helpful, thank you!   The only other version of InDesign I have installed is 17.4.2, but I've just rendered exactly the same file through this older version of InDesign and this does not cause an error in Apogee. This further suggests to me that there is a new bug in InDesign, but I will download some other more recent versions and continue this test until I hit a version that fails. I strongly suspect it will be either 18.3 or 18.4 because this only started happening very recently. ... View more

Never, the InDesign file doesn't appear to be a problem because it happens with PDFs exported from brand new files. I'll try clearing the preferences, thanks. Might end up reinstalling as a last resort, but I'd have to do it across multiple computers, so I'd rather avoid that. ... View more

I think so, version 18.5. ... View more

Hi, we use AFGA Apogee for everything once we have a PDF. This: https://www.agfa.com/printing/products/apogee/   Unfortunately the error is about as useless as it can be, it's literally a full stop: "." Apogee does normally provide a more useful error message than that, but with this it doesn't seem to understand what the problem is, just that there is one. I've attached a screenshot.   I haven't tried preflighting in Acrobat to see if it can identify a problem, is there a particular item I should use for this? Not super familiar with preflighting this way.           ... View more

Thanks for the suggestion, I didn't realise he was available to hire to do something like that, I will contact him. ... View more

Hi, thank you for your reply, I'm sorry for my delayed response.   I've attached a screenshot of a basic version of the sort of thing I'm trying to do. This is one long, super tall table. I want to be able to copy a column of numbers out of excel (or an email, or however the numbers come to me) and paste it into this kind of document so that the table applies a different style to the numbers depending on which page it's on.   I've had a look in all the different kinds of styles, but none of them appear to do what I'd like to.   ... View more

Hi Steve,   I thought as much, that's a shame. I'll just continue to manually type in numbers across 150 pages for the time being then 😄 ... View more

Hi Rob, Thanks for responding. I understand that placed items have different colour spaces, that's why we use separations preview for everything, because it changes all the colours of the various elements so they all match and we can take true colour values for printing. I didn't realise that converting an RBH value in swatches to CMYK would give the same values as the separations preview would, so that's good to know, thanks. I'd also never spotted the Add To Swatches option in the Colour menu, so I'll try and get in the habit of using that if I'm taking values from images (thanks again, to yourself and Uwe!). I'm not sure if that works for vectors, but trying to get CMYK matches for RGB vector elements can throw unexpected results that look fine on screen but don't actually match when printed (although you only really notice this with litho printing, digital tends to be fine). Even if it doesn't work, being able to get something that's basically right (I'll have to remove the decimal places but that's not a problem) for images is a big help, thanks. ... View more

Hi, Thank you for taking the time to do that for me. It is sort of what I'd like to do but it's no faster than using the separations preview, and it only works with images that have already been converted to CMYK, which almost none of the images we receive from customers have been, so while I can see it being helpful in some instances, it doesn't do what I'd need in almost all cases. Thank you anyway, I'm going to assume that what I had originally asked can't be done since nobody seems to be aware of it. ... View more

I think it doesn't work because I just tried it and it doesn't work. It either does nothing or gives me an error message that says "Image is a vector graphic. Eyedropper values based on low resolution RGB proxy." My use case is more often than not doing this on imported PDFs, which may be why it doesn't work, but any vector created in InDesign would already be in swatches anyway barring rare occasions if I'm sent an actual InDesign file and the swatches don't carry across for some reason, which does happen occasionally. But yes, what you're describing is what I would like for it to do, pick up the values shown on the separation preview. Sad to hear that can't be done, it would be incredibly useful. ... View more

I didn't know about this feature, but I just tried it and it doesn't appear to do anything. It didn't add any of the colours in the file I opened into swatches, at least, unless they go to another hidden submenu? I'm assuming this would maybe occur when you have a document that's been made in InDesign but for some reason the colours don't appear in Swatches? Add Unnamed Colours would be a helpful ability if it allowed you to add all vector swatches used in a given document or imported PDF, though it would potentially get confusing with very long documents. ... View more