Highest quality PDF export preset? "Press Quality"?

Hi Ramesh24410975whnr,

to answer the quality of PDF (Print) export:

That relies mainly on the contents of your pages in InDesign.

You may turn off downsampling of images and converting to other color spaces and create a custom export preset from the basic [PDF/X-4:2008] preset.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Hi Ramesh24410975whnr,

the basic PDF Export preset's name in InDesign, Illustrator and PhotoShop is [PDF/X-4:2008].

The underlying standard with this preset is PDF/X-4:2010.

There is no "a" behind the "4".

If  you are using preset [PDF/X-4:2008] or a custom preset that is based on it and the entry of Standard: is None AND the options PDF/X-4:2010, PDF/X-3:2003 and PDF/X-3:2002 are grayed out, you cannot export your document to PDF/X-4 or PDF/X-3. The cause for this: you turned off color management under Edit > Color Settings… Turn it on and the options are available again.

Used fonts in PDFs:

When in Acrobat Pro switch to category Print Production > Preflight

There is an option to get very detailed information on all fonts included in the PDF; even up to the point that you can see a list of used glyphs and their rendition with path points. Menu command "Browse Internal Structure of all Document Fonts…".

That may too much of information.

If you want a detailed report, could be a PDF report, just use Create Inventory > [ x ] Fonts from the Preflight options of Acrobat Pro.

With Adobe Reader only, Preflight is not available.

Look up the used fonts under Document Properties > Fonts

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Choose Press Quality if you want to print : Offset
Choose Hight Quality for Digital Print not Offset

On behalf of Adobe:

Of the PDF export options provided by Adobe applications (including InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop), PDF/X-4a will yield the highest quality, most reliable PDF for print publishing. A close second is High Quality Print.

That having been said, you should always check with your print service provider. Some refuse to accept anything other than early 2000's PDF/X-1a with no color management and ruined (i.e., flattened) transparency. Don't provide them PDF/X-4 if they've are either afraid of it, don't know what it is, aren't trained in 21st century workflows, have ancient workflow software incapable of using PDF/X-4, or are Luddites. 

With regards to a “failed to export” message, that often indicates that one or more of the fonts you are using don't permit embedding in the PDF file, but that would be an issue with PDF/X-1a as well. Provide us more details of your configuration (including OS version, InDesign version, and whether you are running 32-bit or 64-bit InDesign. You might also wish to see whether the export fails on a particular page by trying export of ranges of pages and isolating on which page the export fails. At that point you could conceivably play with that page and see whether a particular graphic object or run of text with a particular font that triggers the failure.

             - Dov

PDF/X-4: 2008 is the most flexible.

With X-4 you can choose to export all color unchanged but with the needed profiles to make the correct conversions at output, which is the default. In that case you could have all of the color be RGB and let the printer choose the final CMYK profile at output. Or if the printer is asking for all CMYK you can simply assign the printer's recommended CMYK profile to your document and when you export set the Destination in the Output tab to Document CMYK and all the conversions will be made during the export.

PDF/X presets also include an Output Intent profile, which alerts the printer to what the expected press profile is—neither High or Press quality presets include an Output Intent.

‌You should normally get a spec from your printer. If that's not available I'd choose the latter.