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Illustrator - PDF - Failure to honor stroke color orientation applied in InDesign

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
May 20, 2019
3 replies
891 views

I've tried to find the answer to this or something close to explain but have come up empty.

I hope someone can help -

In a nutshell - a stroke color aligned to the inside of a stroke in InDesign, exported to PDF and then opened in Illustrator defaults to the center and the stroke itself moves position to the center of the color, altering the object size. WHY?

I built a layout in InDesign that contained a series of 3.375" w x 2.125" h boxes with a stroke color applied to the inside of each.

I exported a PDF and sent it to a colleague to examine in Illustrator. He replied that the box size was incorrect. I opened the PDF in Illustrator myself and lo and behold, the boxes were smaller by half of the stroke amount.

To counteract this, knowing my colleague only has Illustrator to work with, I went back to the Indesign file and adjusted the stroke color there to align to center. A PDF exported this way does produce the correct size box in Illustrator, but now, my InDesign file indicates that my box measures 3.3785" x 2.1285" - which is the reason we have always applied to the stroke color to the inside - to maintain the object size.

What can be done about this? Any Ideas?

stroke alignment

This topic has been closed for replies.

Jacob Bugge

Community Expert

Rebekkah,

Maybe, just maybe, the solution is extremely simple.

What happens if you (both) tick Edit>General Preferences>Use Preview Bounds?

That ought to show the outer measure which corresponds exactly to the size as you created it in InDesign.

Jon Fritz

Community Expert

HA!

I've been doing it the hard way for years, LOL.

Gotta love the random-seeming Preference checkboxes.

Jon Fritz

Community Expert

Another option would be to have the Illustrator user...

1. Open the PDF in AI

2. Choose a stroked box with the Selection tool

3. Choose Object > Path > Outline Stroke

That will turn the stroke into a shape, and get it back to the size from ID.

You ultimately end up with the same thing as my previous post, a rectangular stroke shape (rather than a box with a stroke around it) it would just be done on the client side instead.

Mike_Gondek10189183

Community Expert

The native file format for Illustrator is .ai, once you open a pdf in illustrator do not expect the file construct to be as you would like. Upon the poitn you save as a .pdf form InDesgin you are reconstructing the file to fit the .pdf format.

What actually happens is the art is the sam if it was to print, but how this is constructed is different. For example i set a 2 inch square with 10 pt inside stroke in InDesign and exported to .pdf. After opening .pdf in Illustrator the size of the rectangle is 1.8611 inches, but the stroke is set to center.

On the right I added an illustratator 2 inch 10pt inwards stroke so you can see they are the same.

Design in InDesign with the stroke centered. Or even better copy from InDesgn and paste into Illustrataor.

rebekkahtAuthor

Participating Frequently

It is not the construct that is different, it is the size of the box itself when exported as a pdf from InDesign

First screenshot shows the box in InDesign with the stroke to the inside and the size of the box is 2.75" w and 1.5" h

This next screenshot shows the PDF exported from InDesign and opened in illustrator. The size has been reduced and the "box" is now smaller than the one I created - the maintenance of object sizes in this case is crucial - yet it is not happening.

Mike_Gondek10189183

Community Expert

By construct (construction of your art) I am saying the size of your vector shapes are different by the size of your stroke. The difference is the thickness of your stroke. Please review my original post again.

Remove the stroke in InDesign and you will get the width and height you are expecting. When you make PDFs the size fo your rectangles change by the stroke amount so the stroke can be set to center.

Relying on a workflow that depends on Illustrator being able to convert PDFs exactly how you need is a laymans recipe for eventual disaster.

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