Images with high PPI look pixelated in PDF export from InDesign CC

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
December 18, 2017
5 replies
1853 views

I'm putting together a guide in InDesign CC, meant for screen only that I'm exporting as a PDF interactive. I have 2 logos that continue to look pixelated after exporting the file no matter what I do. I've checked each logo file, and the PNGs that I imported into InDesign were 8000 pixels wide with a 72 ppi. After scaling them down, however, they had an effective PPI of 1412 and 3727. Despite this, as I said, they still look pixelated when I export. Anybody know what my issue is?

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rob day

Community Expert

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Alex+Yao+Ming wrote
I'm putting together a guide in InDesign CC, meant for screen only

Also for screen only PDFs you are up against the relatively low resolution of any display, so you can export a high resolution but when it gets scaled down for display in a browser or reader detail will inevitably be lost. This has come up a lot recently, this thread might help:

https://forums.adobe.com/message/10046047?et=watches.email.outcome#10046047

rob day

Community Expert

they had an effective PPI of 1412 and 3727

All of the default print PDF Export presets set a threshold for the maximum resolution at 450ppi, so those presets would downsample your logos to 300ppi.

See the for images above: setting in the Compression tab.

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Why did you import the logos as PNG? I suppose that these logos were vectors on the first place, probably done in Illustrator. Place the AI or PDF/X-4 instead.