Inspiring

Question

Images blurry when exported to PDF

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
August 4, 2020
4 replies
12462 views

I have been working on a document that I have exported numerous times. The photographic material on the pages have always looked fine at every PDF export but all of a sudden they all went blurry after the last PDF export. I have made absolutely no changes in the export process. Everything is exactly the same as it has been on all the other exports. The standard export compression setting has been Automatic (JPG) Image quality Maximum. To solve this sudden problem I tried exporting with the Compression setting to None as well but it doesn't fix anything. The preset is set to High quality print as always.

I have read other posts on this topic but they all have special local setting differences that's not applicable to my setup. There's no interactive document or anything like that. It's just export result gone wild with no obvious reason.

W10 Pro.
Indesign 15.1.1 x64

Import and export

This topic has been closed for replies.

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SpirentPSC

Participant

Hi. Did you ever figure this problem out? I'm having the same issue. I use InDesign daily and all of a sudden I can't get the images to PDF clearly. Using Acrobat Output Preview and they all say 300 but are blurry.

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perrybrusAuthor

Inspiring

I've never figured out all the "gifts" that so often goes along with accepting an update. There's always something going on with the Adobe apps and in terms of ID it's been alot of image export issues, PDF export issues, vector rendering issues and so on. My images are blurry on and off, and its ONLY in Indesign. I've given up figuring this one out. It's a perpertual bug.

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Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

I sincerely doubt it's due to the update or the forum would be flooded with users with the same problem.

This is unique to your situation. If you don't have Acrobat Pro - what are you using to view the exported PDF?

I read the thread - and just because they look ok in InDesign means nothing really, InDesign uses a Proxy image to display the image, and you're looking at it on screen - so a lower resolution image will look sharp on screen anyway.

For print you can definitely go as low as 240 PPI - and that's litho at a 150LPI output setting.

If it's digital you could probably go a bit lower. But depends on the image subject, like a face at 150ppi printed on 150LPI output litho might look terrible, but a foggy scene would be perfectly ok. It's subjective to the sharpeness/details required for the image.

So I need to ask - what are you viewing the PDF in?

What PDF settings are you using?

Seems weird you can't share you document - someone like Rob Day who gave you lots of great tips to check the image - I don't think they'd have any problem checking out what's going on in the PDF and would agree to delete it and not reveal it's content - like an NDA.

I'll do it for you if you want - I have no interest in your PDF contents and would agree to inspect the file to figure out what is going on and then delete the file completely.

I wrote an article on it though a while ago - you might garner some clues

https://creativepro.com/high-res-image-look-low-res/#:~:text=By%20default%2C%20InDesign%20is%20set,and%20click%20on%20Display%20Performance.

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com

Legend

@perrybrus, you mentioned that you're on Windows.

Microsoft has been slowing releasing a major OS upgrade to billions of users over the past few weeks. We just got our update and I noticed the video/display drivers were updated as well on our workstations. See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/whats-new-windows-10-version-2004

We're now seeing a slight change in how photos appear (text, menus, dialogues, also). Even with my screensavers, some now appear, well, not "burry" as you describe, but definitely not as sharp and crisp as they did before the OS upgrade.

Wondering if this might be what's causing the change. On my system, the new OS is:

Windows 10 Pro

Version 2004

OS Build 19041.388

The previous OS was version 1903/1909.

Given what we're seeing on our systems, a photo with only 150 ppi would definitely appear either pixelated, blurry/fuzzy, or with noticeable artifacts in high-contrast areas.

FYI, most screens today have ppi resolutions of 200-400 or higher, and that includes desktop monitors, tablets, laptop screens, and mobile devices. As others have suggested, try improving the resolution of your photos. At our studio, we now build all photos to an effective (or final viewing resolution) of at least 300 ppi to ensure clear photos on all screens. 400 ppi is even better.

The "bar" has been raised!

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |

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perrybrusAuthor

Inspiring

Improve 300 PPI? That's max of what even a printer needs in order to print it maximum. My image files are big, most of them 6000x4000px at 105mb. I've used images half this resolution for print purposes before, and for screen purposes you don't need even half of that. This is not an image source issue. As mentioned all the images renders perfectly in prior PDF exports and I haven't changed or altered any of the existing images. In terms of screen resolution I'm viewing this on an Eizo ColorEdge 2560x1440. It's a reference monitor, you don't need 4K or higher resolution in order to assess images. That is silly hysteria. I have two laptops with 4K displays and they are not what I would call good image displays. You need a monitor with high color accuracy and stable grayscale properties. Most 4K laptop displays are very bad at that. In terms of hardware my graphic card is a GeForce RTX 2070 running on a custom stationary hightower workstation - but it doesn't affect this issue at all. It's kinda off topic. I'm trying to resolve an issue that has to do with Indesign and the export to PDF process that obviously doesn't work as it should at the moment.

In terms of Windows I'm on W10 Pro V1909 and OS build is 18363.959 and that's latest available for me here. No updates available.

rob day

Community Expert

If you compare the image resolution in AcrobatPro’s Object Inspector to the Effective resolution of the linked image in InDesign, that would clarify whether the images are getting exported at a lower than expected resolution. If the Effective Resolution and the output resolution match then the problem would be with the display.

It’s just hard to know with out seeing the PDF or at least a screen capture. If the imagery is high contrast line art, your Acrobat Page Display Preferences might be affecting how the images are anti-aliased for screen display.

rob day

Community Expert

Can you share the PDF with the low res images?

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perrybrusAuthor

Inspiring

I'm afraid not cause I don't own the document or the rights to the yet unpublished content.

rob day

Community Expert

We can’t help you without seeing the problem.

You can check the PDF image resolution using AcrobatPro either via Preflight or Output Preview‘s Object Inspector. With Object Inspector click an image to get its resolution as pixels per inch, or its pixel dimensions.

jmlevy

Community Expert

Hi,

Did you check the links panel? No links missing? What is the effective resolution?

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perrybrusAuthor

Inspiring

No links missing. What do you mean by effective resolution? As mentioned it's not an interactive document or intended for web. It's a print document.

jmlevy

Community Expert

Yes, I understood that your document is not an interactive document. Actual resolution is the resolution of the image at 100% size. Effective resolution is the resolution of the image when it has been scaled in InDesign. So if the original images were at 300 ppi, but upscaled at 200%in InDesign, their effective resolution will be 150 ppi.

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