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Participant
January 15, 2023
Question

Duplicate link names changed by Indesign but wrong links updated in final CMYK document

  • January 15, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 212 views

I put together a magazine for conventional CMYK printing.

There are 100s of images submitted in a mixture of CMYK and RGB formats.

By chance, some of the images will have the same name (photographers take 1000s of pictures and cameras label the images with a limited range of numbers).

The danger is that the wrong image appears in the wrong spread because it has the same file name.

We try and check carefully so this does not happen

In recent versions of Indesign we noticed that there is a clever piece of the software that recognises these kinds of name duplicates, recognises they are different pictures and re-names one of them with a '-1'.

Eg: if there are two r244.jpg files, one stays as r244.jpg and the other is re-named r244-1.jpg

This ensures that the correct image appears in the correct image box and in the correct story in the layout.

We thought this was amazing insight and it is...but...there is a glitch and I wondered if anyone could help?

 

The glitch: Prior to printing, we take all the images, batch convert them to CMYK in Photoshop and re-link them in the Indesign document. Only CMYK links are re-linked and they all come from a single folder, with no chance of any files coming from anywhere else. When I checked the folder, there were still the two versions r244.jpg and r244-1.jpg. The problem is, that for some reason Indesign had updated the layout only with the r244.jpg file so the same picture appeared in 2 stories, even though the second story should have had the r244-1.jpg.

 

I realise there is a direct way of dealing with this, by double checking prior to print for duplicated images but I wanted to highlight the problem and ask you Adobe, or anyone else if there was a solution?

 

Many thanks, Dan

 

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1 reply

rob day
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 15, 2023

Hi @Daniel27946598szid , If the linking problem is occurring because of your CMYK conversions, you might rethink that workflow. InDesign is capable of making exactly the same CMYK conversions as Photoshop on a PDF Export. If you set the Output tab’s Destination Profile to the same destination profile you are using in Photoshop, there will be no difference in the exported CMYK values. Also make sure you use the same Conversion Options, which can be globally set in ID’s Color Settings.

Community Expert
January 15, 2023

I was going to say the exact same thing.

 

There's literally no no need to do any conversion in photoshop unless you're touching up afterwards. If you're not making additional touchups there's no need to do anything in photoshop.

 

In fact - you could even just export to PDF-4a and leave the images in CMYK/RGB etc. and let the printers RIP do the final conversion to CMYK for output - if you talk to them they might recommend this or advise against it - it would be up to the individual printers.