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Question

Indesign 2018 saving all pdf's very low-res regardless of settings.

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
October 21, 2017
34 replies
38678 views

I can't make Indesign 2018 export a high res pdf. All the links are great. Preflight is green. Verified my pdf presets resolutions, and also tried the default ones. Everything, eps and raster, is low res when it comes up in Acrobat DC.

When I go back to Indesign 2017, it outputs correctly at high res, the same exact files, as it always had.

I uninstalled acrobat DC, and that made no difference. How do I fix the distiller with Indesign 2018?

The Indesign 2018 pdf results look lower than 72 dpi. Anyone else see this?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Lukas Engqvist

Community Expert

If preflight is green and resolution in images is acceptable it could be the transparency flattening settings that have been set to rasterise at a too low resolution. Normally you can set transparency flattening settings.

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi @julietw99713499 ,

if you are unsure of the results of PDF export regarding image downsampling:

Just don't do it. Just do not downsampling of images at all. If you prepare PDFs for e.g. offset printing downsampling is not required.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

J

julietw99713499

Known Participant

That is not the issue at all. You have completely missed the point.

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi @julietw99713499 ,

so you have turned off downsampling altogether and you still get lowres PDFs ?

I'd like to see a sample document packaged.

Thanks,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

michelleg94011094

Participant

I know everyone is saying you verified resolutions, but I just went through this, so I'm going to say here what I did and you can see if that works for you. I'm not sure step one is necessary or not, but the gist is you have to uncheck the optimize for fast web view option when you export. The idea is to make sure it's not optimizing at all, not for print... Now if you were doing an ebook, you might want to optimize.

1. I first changed my PDF settings in the Print (non In Design).

File > Print > Set up > OK (for warning about presets) > Preferences > Default Settings to Press Quality in dropdown > Edit > changed resolution from 2400 dpi to 3000 dpi > OK > saved the preset...

From here you can cancel the rest out because it won't work with just that. But it created a nice preset to adjust to better dpi.

2. File > Export > Chose a file name > Dropdown to my new preset on the top by Adobe PDF presets > in General Tab under options, uncheck "optimize for fast web view" > Export

Abambo

Community Expert

michelleg94011094 wrote
you have to uncheck the optimize for fast web view option when you export. The idea is to make sure it's not optimizing at all, not for print...

Optimize for fast web view optimizes how the data is stored in the PDF, allowing for directly accessing page X without having to load all the preceeding pages. There is no quality penalty using that. I suppose, the files are marginally bigger, as the optimizer needs to ensure that any oage does not depend from the preceeding page.

michelleg94011094 wrote
changed resolution from 2400 dpi to 3000 dpi > OK > saved the preset...

I hope this is only a typo. 2400 dpi is never needed, except for scanning things that are extremly small and need to be reproduced enlarged.

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer

michelleg94011094

Participant

I don't know. That's just what I did that made it work. And it worked.

A

angietennessee

Participant

I was having the same issue, and I called Adobe for a quick fix! I'm sure you've already tried this, so forgive me if it's old news and you're on to more advanced problems. Here is what I did to fix it: File -> Export -> Save As: 'Example'; Format: Adobe PDF (Interactive) -> Save -> Compression -> Compression: JPEG (Lossy); JPEG Quality: High; Resolution (ppi): 300 -> Export -> Okay

Woohoo! Hope this helps!

M

maarten0228

Participant

Hi rmdtulsa

i had the same problem. I had tried every option to change it. Then i saw an option in the "pdf export menu" called : Optimise for Fast Web View. Once i disabled that option the exported pdf's where in "high res" . i hope that it will help you!

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi maarten0228 ,

thank you for the comment. What is the exact version of your InDesign CC 2018 ?
Did you update to CC 2018.1 ?

Regards,
Uwe

C

charlesmkelley

Participant

Just out of curiosity, what is everyone's settings for color conversion when exporting? I had two prefs setup (one for proof w/ color conversion, one without and w/ marks and bleed for print). When exporting as the latter, no image resolution issue, when doing it with the former, major issues.

Blixa 6 Studios

Participant

Update - Once installing the 2017 version and deleting the preferences again, I continued to have the same export problem in the older version of InDesign as well. So - I had to re-create the layout in Illustrator - exported it and came out with a properly high resolution PDF file - 11.9MB instead of 998kb.

Blixa 6 Studios

Participant

I have also tried trashing the preferences following the instructions in the thread - and am working with 13.0.1 - and still am only exporting low res files.

Having just discovered this problem while facing my first print deadline since updating to CC2018, its not so great to learn I have to revert to 2017 to get what should be a very basic function completed. Considering the time constraints, this seems to be the only option.

nickm74821483

Participating Frequently

Did this get fixed yet? I downgraded and am wondering if it's worth trying the latest version again.

Anasuiya Gupta

Adobe Employee

Yes, the issue was fixed with the update of InDesign CC (13.0.1).

And, you should try the latest version, it has a number of exciting features like Endnotes, Paragraph Borders, and many more, along with a number of bug fixes increasing the stability and performance of InDesign.

Regards

Anasuiya Gupta