Inspiring

Answered

Blurry PDF created in Indesign using Photoshop links

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
September 4, 2023
7 replies
2280 views

Hi,

I hope someone can advise me!

I printed a file from Indesign today. The file has about 160 links most of which are PDF and quite a few that I linked Photoshop files to it directly.

All the photoshop files printed blurry - even though I know they are high quality files with good resolution.

When I looked at the file in Adobe Acrobat it looked 100% clear so I didn't notice anything.

How should I be exporting the Indesign file? I am using Indesign CC.

Should I rather save my Photoshop files as Photoshop PDF? Or is this not necessary and it is settings to do with the exporting.

Please help!

Thanks

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Correct answer Tali27456379ou33

Hi everyone.

Thank you for your advice.

It was a time-sensitive issue so what I did was export all the Photoshop files into JPEGs and then re-linked and re-exported the PDF in Indesign.

I am not aware of technical information so cannot help much on that front with regards to the printing.

Rishabh_Tiwari

Legend

Hi @Tali27456379ou33,

Did the suggestions shared above help? Feel free to update the discussion if you need further assistance.

Thanks

Rishabh

T

Tali27456379ou33AuthorCorrect answer

Inspiring

Hi everyone.

Thank you for your advice.

It was a time-sensitive issue so what I did was export all the Photoshop files into JPEGs and then re-linked and re-exported the PDF in Indesign.

I am not aware of technical information so cannot help much on that front with regards to the printing.

Lukas Engqvist

Community Expert

As others have mentioned can you help to disambiguate the term print. Are you sending to a comercial Print shop or is it a printer (device) you have? Do you know more specific if it is printed in offset, inkjet or xerography (laser printer) or some other method? When you say blurry could you specify is it "soft" or "miss registered"? (A close up of photograph of the print would help). If you are printing the PDF I hope you are printing from Acrobat, or using a RIP (Fiery/ Apogee/ Printergy/ Onyx etc)

If you are expecting high quality line art you may need to exceed 300PPI and make sure that black/grey is black (K or Key) only. Illustrations can be more tricky to print that photographs because Photographs are more forgiving. If you are sending to a comercial printer there may be downsampling happening, but without access to the files it is a little guesswork.

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi @Tali27456379ou33 ,

opened your PDF in Acrobat Pro. Technically I see no issue at all.

Are all of the placed images on that page PSD files?

Depending on the printing process the images could be a bit more sharper with a small amount of unsharp masking, but that's not the issue, I guess, when you say that they are printing blurry.

FWIW: The images could have a bit more resolution, perhaps 450 ppi to 600 ppi, because they are showing small text.

But all in all there is no reason why they should print blurry at all.

Here a screenshot from Acrobat Pro:

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

rob day

Community Expert

Hi @Tali27456379ou33 , I agree with Uwe an image with text would need more than 300ppi to be fully resolved. I can see from Uwe's capture the image was downsampled on the Export, what was the starting resolution? Effective Resolution listed in InDesign.

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

That was my sentiment too. Glad we all agree on that one.

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

You say you printed a file from InDesign and it came out blurry.

I'm confused if you printed directly from InDesign to your desktop printer?
Did you export it as a PDF or print to a PDF?

If it's a desktop printer did you try printing from the PDF and going to Advanced Tab and select print as image

I'm just not sure how you're exporting or printing the document.

The PDF looks ok - the one with just the text - in the top left corner - I'd have that at least 1200 ppi for print as it's mostly text - or leave it Vector if at all possible.

So your PDF settings would need to be changed to No Compression or similar.

But it completely depends on what you're using the PDF for - if you have crop marks it's usually for print.

Do you need it to be 300ppi?

What happens if you make the PDF without any compression and print from that.

Best way is using File>Export, by the way, didn't mention that earlier.

Maybe you're doing this already.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

The PDF looks good on screen in Acrobat? If you print a sample page to your own printer that came back blurry from the print shop does it look correct?

Did you check the links in InDesign before exporting? If the links are not missing or modified your export settings should give good results, ceratinly not blurry, on a press or digital printer.

Can you share sample page from the PDF that caused a problem?

T

Tali27456379ou33Author

Inspiring

Yes the PDF looked perfect on screen.

After it came out blurry, the printer printed one sample page - and that too came out blurry.

All the links are perfect.

How should I share a sample page?

As a PDF file - one of the pages?

Peter Spier

Community Expert

Yes, in Acrobat you can extract one or two pages and save as a new PDF to post here.

I don't want to accuse the printer of incompetence without more evidence, but it really sounds like thay are opening your PDF in something other than Acrobat to print.