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Placed PDFs in InDesign not rendering correctly

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
November 29, 2018
5 replies
8189 views

Recently, ads I design in Affinity Designer and export as a PDF (which I have been doing for years without problem) suddenly will not open properly when placed in InDesign 2019. Some elements are missing. I am using Mac OS 10.14.1, Affinity designer 1.6.1 and InDesign 14.0.1

The screenshot shows very clearly the problem. Every application I own will open the exported PDF correctly (Adobe Acrobat, Mac Preview, MS Word, Pages, as an attachment to email, etc, etc, except for InDesign 2019 and Photoshop 2019.

I would be grateful for your thoughts.

I have also sent this to the Affinity team, but I suspect they will say that as it opens correctly in every other app under the sun, it must be an Adobe problem, which I have to say seems logical.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Laubender

Hi CaptainSlocum ,

thank you again for the sample PDF. That's really helpful.

Here the placed PDF with InDesign CC 2019. PDF Layers ( graphic layers ) showing.

Obviously some parts are missing.

This is not a screen redraw error! The page from above exported to PDF/X-4 and opened in Acrobat Pro DC:

The original PDF opened in Acrobat Pro DC is showing all elements:

InDesign CC 2018.1:

Had a crash after placing the PDF with import options showing and crop set to "Media".

Sent the report, got a message back that there is a fix for the problem with the crash:

The link "Weitere Informationen" leads me to:

Crash while deleting an object in InDesign

Ok. Quite another hotfix for InDesign CC 2018.1 on Windows I did not know or forgot about.

Installed the hotfix, placed the PDF.

Same results with InDesign CC 2018.1.

Some elements of the PDF are missing:

Tested on with InDesign CC 2017.1 version 12.1.0.56 on Windows 10.

This time all elements of the placed PDF is showing:

InDesign CS6:

No issue to place the PDF. All elements in the PDF showing on the InDesign page:

Conclusion:

A severe bug with InDesign's PDF import module with versions CC 2019 14.0.0.130 and 14.0.1.209 and InDesign CC 2018.1.

Workaround:

Use an earlier version like InDesign CC 2017.1 or InDesign CS6.

I assume that CC 2015.4, CC 2014.2 and CC 9.3.0 will also work without flaws in this regard.

Regards,
Uwe

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi Steve,

can you share a sample PDF where placing goes wrong?

Best put in on Dropbox and post the download link.

And: Open your problem PDF with Acrobat Pro.

Can you see its contents? What does the information say about the creator software?

Thanks,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

S

SteveGuluk

Participating Frequently

I can confirm there is still a problem with placing PDFs into InDesign docs in version 2020. It places them fine but show a blank space on the final exported PDF. Rolling back to ID CC 2018 worked as expected without problems.

L

loriw1431899

Participant

I deal with this issue all the time - it isn't true of all pdfs, but probably 25% of the ones I deal with. My easy way to solve it is to go to Display Performance, and go from high quality (where things are missing) to typical quality, and everything shows up. It would be nice if this could be fixed!

D

Danielle253329329ar3

Participant

November 2022.

I have this issue too - but with placing pdf's generated out of Word (V 16.66.1), into an Indesign doc (V 17.3). I'm creating a school yearbook that includes student profiles created by them in word docs.

The pdf's generate fine from Word, but when I create a pdf of the yearbook from Indesign so I can send it to print, the pages that contain the Word pdf's all have issues similar to those mentioned above! Diabolical!!! Thanks to finding this thread, I have now transfered everything over to my old Mac running CS6, which has no issues!! I have wasted about 7 hours of mucking around and troubleshooting, that I can't charge to my client. sigh

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

Let's try one more thing:

Open it in Acrobat, and export it as a TIFF/JPEG with 300 dpi resolution from Acrobat.

Open it in Photoshop and see if the missing pieces appear.

Print the Photoshop image and the Acrobat-opened PDF to see if what you see is what you get on the printout. While you're at it, it probably wouldn't hurt to see if the suspect PDF prints correctly out of InDesign too, and the problem resides in display onscreen and not output.

This process will help you (and us) isolate the problem(s) for you.

Please let us know what you find out,

Randy

C

CaptainSlocumAuthor

Known Participant

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Randy+Hagan wrote
Let's try one more thing:
Open it in Acrobat, and export it as a TIFF/JPEG with 300 dpi resolution from Acrobat.
Open it in Photoshop and see if the missing pieces appear.
Print the Photoshop image and the Acrobat-opened PDF to see if what you see is what you get on the printout. While you're at it, it probably wouldn't hurt to see if the suspect PDF prints correctly out of InDesign too, and the problem resides in display onscreen and not output.
This process will help you (and us) isolate the problem(s) for you.
Please let us know what you find out,
Randy

Doing what you ask in the first part results in a correct image of course - exporting to a raster image has never been a problem, but the printer wants our magazines as PDFs. As a work around I have had to export the missing bits as PNG files then make a PDF from the whole thing, but the quality suffers and those bits are no longer editable by a third party.

As to the second part, I can confirm the problem is not just the preview, the print out has the same problem.

Opening it in AI and placing the AI file in InDesign, as one person suggested, does not work either.

G

geoffb78492731

Participant

I had a similar problem awhile back. I created a new 1-page document with nothing else on it, then placed the ad. Save the page, then try to output. It worked fine from the new doc. I guessed it wasn't a problem with the ad, but with the magazine doc. Completely deleted the problem ad page from mag, then created a new blank in it's place and inserted the ad. No more problem outputting the mag.

L

Laubender

Community Expert

CaptainSlocum wrote
Recently, ads I design in Affinity Designer and export as a PDF (which I have been doing for years without problem) suddenly will not open properly when placed in InDesign 2019.

Hi,

suddenly? Did you do an update to your OSX perhaps?
Did it work before with InDesign CC 2019? With previous versions and the same PDF?

Thanks,
Uwe

C

CaptainSlocumAuthor

Known Participant

I have tried rolling back to InDesign 2018 but get the same problem. I have actually had a problem for some time - that is to say PDFs looking fine everywhere else except in InDesign, but it has only really just become a problem because of the way I am working. In the past it was random, and manifested itself as InDesign refusing to export to PDF the whole magazine that contained the offending ad page/s. I discovered that if I remove the offending ad page and substitute a PNG or JPEG, it works. But this is the first time I have had just areas of the PDF not showing.

I am using the latest version of Mac OS (10.14.1)

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Thank you for the sample!

I'll be back later.

For now it seems that InDesign CS6 on Windows 10 has no problem with this kind of PDF.

With CC 2019 14.0.1.209 I see the issues.

Regards,
Uwe

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi,

will the preview change, if you switch between Overprint Preview on / off ?

Will it be different if GPU acceleration is turned off? Or turned on?

Can you provide the PDF with Dropbox or a similar service and post a link here so that I could try to inspect it with Acrobat Pro DC and have a test on Windows 10?

Thanks,
Uwe

C

CaptainSlocumAuthor

Known Participant

Thanks for the reply

will the preview change, if you switch between Overprint Preview on / off ?

No change

will it be different if GPU acceleration is turned off? Or turned on?

No change

Here is a Dropbox link to the original PDF file

Dropbox - Inside cover right hand.pdf

Many thanks

L

Laubender

Correct answer

Community Expert

Hi CaptainSlocum ,

thank you again for the sample PDF. That's really helpful.

Here the placed PDF with InDesign CC 2019. PDF Layers ( graphic layers ) showing.

Obviously some parts are missing.

This is not a screen redraw error! The page from above exported to PDF/X-4 and opened in Acrobat Pro DC:

The original PDF opened in Acrobat Pro DC is showing all elements:

InDesign CC 2018.1:

Had a crash after placing the PDF with import options showing and crop set to "Media".

Sent the report, got a message back that there is a fix for the problem with the crash:

The link "Weitere Informationen" leads me to:

Crash while deleting an object in InDesign

Ok. Quite another hotfix for InDesign CC 2018.1 on Windows I did not know or forgot about.

Installed the hotfix, placed the PDF.

Same results with InDesign CC 2018.1.

Some elements of the PDF are missing:

Tested on with InDesign CC 2017.1 version 12.1.0.56 on Windows 10.

This time all elements of the placed PDF is showing:

InDesign CS6:

No issue to place the PDF. All elements in the PDF showing on the InDesign page:

Conclusion:

A severe bug with InDesign's PDF import module with versions CC 2019 14.0.0.130 and 14.0.1.209 and InDesign CC 2018.1.

Workaround:

Use an earlier version like InDesign CC 2017.1 or InDesign CS6.

I assume that CC 2015.4, CC 2014.2 and CC 9.3.0 will also work without flaws in this regard.

Regards,
Uwe

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