Problem with two gradients disappearing Indesign to Illustrator

[antonk114510]

Hi!

I have a problem when exporting two CMYK gradient colors from Indesign(2025) and then opening up the document in Illustrator(2025).

I export it as an .pdf CMYK Fogra 39 but as soon as I open it up two of the gradients in the document disappears.

I will Attach the indesign document "Utredning_FLH" and its the two first gradients that disappears.

Some of you have any idea of what could be the problem?

[Monika Gause]

Exporting means what? You export a PDF and then open the PDF in Illustrator?

Illustrator is not a general purpose PDF editor. It might or might not work and when it doesn't work, just rebuild the gradient

[antonk114510]

Yes, exporting it as an .Pdf from ID then open it up in illustrator.

I usually get .pdf documents from clients and then open them (to put cutlines bleeds etc.) trough .ai and rarley get any problem but with this file it didnt work and was just curious what could be the problem. Also to tell the client what they can do to do the .pdf file correct.

[Monika Gause]

It's a bad idea to open client provided PDFs in Illustrator if the PDFs have not been saved from Illustrator with "preserve ditability" turned on.

Either the clients provide you with a printready PDF or they give you the source files or you use dedicated prepress tools for those edits.

[Bill Silbert]

Did you actually have a native InDesign file with the colors applied through InDesign's swatches panel or did the InDesign file contain imported pdfs? If the latter is the case then importing from InDesign would not produce editable pdfs in Illustrator. Did the client provide the pdfs that were brought in to the InDesign file? If so then then those should be directly imported into Illustrator. Also, please note that any pdfs that are essentially images cannot be edited at all in Illustrator. For any chance of editability the original pdf will need to have been created from a "live" file.

[Bobby Henderson]

If you're receiving a lot art from clients in the form of PDF files I'd recommend getting Astute Graphics' suite of Illustrator plugins, which includes Vector First Aid. That plugin can fix a lot of trash that gets automatically baked into PDF files, even PDF files generated by InDesign.

Like Monika said, the only good, edit-friendly PDFs are ones created by Adobe Illustrator with the "preserve Illustrator Editing Capability" setting checked on. What that actually does is append Illustrator data to the PDF file so when it is re-opened in Illustrator it behaves like a normal Illustrator file.

It's best to receive art files from clients in their original native format, or a format more directly compatible with Illustrator rather than a mystery meat PDF. But we don't live in a perfect world either. Half the time I receive a "logo" from someone it's a JPEG image pulled off a web page. They might save that JPEG image inside a PDF container file, thinking that will magically convert the JPEG image into clean vector art. Very often a PDF file with actual vector art inside will be the best thing a client can provide.

Astute Graphics' plugins aren't cheap. The collection runs $139 per year (US pricing). But I think the cost is worth it for all the time Vector First Aid and the other plugins can save. Vector First Aid isn't perfect. Artwork extracted from PDF files may need some additional editing. The plugin can at least provide a big head start at cleaning up the mess.

[antonk114510]

Thanxs for the help!

I will check out more about the Astute Graphics plugin.

I stumbled on a lot of problems that I could come around easy and explain to the client with effects, pixel graphics etc. But here I first got the .pdf and then later the original indesign file and too me it looks like a non problem just cmyk gradients created in Indesign and when I export them with "acrobat layer" hi-quality cmyk fogra39 its looks fine in acrobat but some gradients just disapear when I open them up in Illustator and that I just find strange.

But as you say the best is always to get the original native format of course!

If some of you want to try the file its also attatched here.

[Monika Gause]

Gradients are a known issue when exchanging stuff between InDeisgn and Illustrator and vice versa. They often get lost or changed even when copying artwork between both apps.