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Participating Frequently
October 23, 2025
Answered

InDesign Export to Pdf Error

  • October 23, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 262 views

i encountered this error since indesign ver. 19, until now, im using indesign ver. 20.5

im using (see pic below)

can't eloborate because im not english speaking, just see my screen record

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nSTE2_GeF507Iy7L58LDYss4Fgt92vP_?usp=sharing

the placed file in pages are ordinary .tif file

im just want to address this error, and improve the performance of InDesign.

thank you!

Correct answer leo.r

exporting page-by-page is not practical, time consuming for indesign file with 100 pages.

although,  exporting with stated pages (ex: 1-10, 11-20, 21-30 and so on) has no issue, but it is not ideal for apps specialized in multi-page document processing.


quote

exporting page-by-page is not practical, time consuming for indesign file with 100 pages.

although,  exporting with stated pages (ex: 1-10, 11-20, 21-30 and so on) has no issue, but it is not ideal for apps specialized in multi-page document processing.


By @JhunRuby

 

Oh yeah of course exporting page-by-page is just a temporary workaround as well as a test to see if it's at all possible. Now that you know that you can export each spread successfully, it's clear that the problem only happens when exporting multiple pages.

2 replies

rob day
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 23, 2025

Hi @JhunRuby , There is a well documented Photoshop bug where the file metadata grows and corrupts the file. It looks like that is happening to your .tiff files. See the file size difference with this .psd copy—29MB vs. 120MB:

 

 

Here are a couple of threads on the problem—this contains an InDesign script fix:

 

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/is-there-a-script-to-clear-indesign-metadata-redundancy-or-the-clipboard-just-like-photoshop/m-p/12638735#M460299

 

These are more in depth:

 

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/inflated-jpg-file-size-photoshop-document-ancestors-metadata/td-p/8055434

 

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/file-size-is-too-big/td-p/9370587#10084949

 

 

 

Willi Adelberger
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 23, 2025
  1. Where does the tiff come from?
  2. Is the complete page a tiff? If so, you should use a PDF/ X-4 instead. 
    why do youse TIFF?
JhunRubyAuthor
Participating Frequently
October 23, 2025

originally, the file is psd (rgb) supplied by our client, i flattened then convert to cmyk to lessen the byte size, then placed in InDesign, then export to pdf to make 1 file with multiple pages.  tiff files are here  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nSTE2_GeF507Iy7L58LDYss4Fgt92vP_?usp=sharing

we convert all files to pdf to process in Heidelberg Prinect workflow. we are offset printer. i am prepress staff.

sorry for my english. 🙂

Willi Adelberger
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 23, 2025

Photoshop is not the best tool. Ask the client to bring not flattened layered PSD files. Save them as. PpDF without flattering RGB PDF files and place them 

Better would be to create the text in InDesign.  Better would be to have each image as separate file.