Indesign 2018 saving all pdf's very low-res regardless of settings.

Report · Oct 21, 2017

I can't make Indesign 2018 export a high res pdf. All the links are great. Preflight is green. Verified my pdf presets resolutions, and also tried the default ones. Everything, eps and raster, is low res when it comes up in Acrobat DC.

When I go back to Indesign 2017, it outputs correctly at high res, the same exact files, as it always had.

I uninstalled acrobat DC, and that made no difference. How do I fix the distiller with Indesign 2018?

The Indesign 2018 pdf results look lower than 72 dpi. Anyone else see this?

Report · Dec 08, 2017

Thanks!

Report · Jan 09, 2018

I have InDesign CC (13.0 x64) and can't seem to update any further. Is this the latest update?

I am still getting lo res PDF exports and it is doing my head in!

Report · Jan 09, 2018

Hi

The latest update of InDesign CC is 13.0.1. Go to Help > About InDesign to check the version. If it shows shows 13.0 x64 then

open the Creative Cloud Application, and go to the flyout menu by clicking on the 3 dots besides the Profile picture in the top right corner, click on "Check for app updates". Update for InDesign CC will be shown in the Apps tab.

Also, before launching InDesign, try trashing the preferences.

Regards

Anasuiya Gupta

Report · Jan 09, 2018

Thank you for your reply. I have checked for updates as per your instructions but it still says it is up to date.

I have also tried trashing the preferences as per the work around but clicking shift + ctrl + alt on launch doesn't do anything..

Report · Jan 28, 2018

Could you please tell me the exact version of InDesign you are using, while pressing the Ctrl/Cmd key click on the About InDesign. Also, if possible please share your InDesign files with us at anasgupt@adobe.com as a complete package with Links included along with a copy of your preferences.

Also, please try the following steps and let me know the results:

Close the indd file you are working with
Make all your links missing by moving the Links folder to some other location (or any other way you find suitable)
After opening the indd file, Relink all your links from the Links panel
Export to PDF Print

Please let me know, if this gives you a high resolution PDF or not.

Report · Jan 27, 2018

I have also tried trashing the preferences following the instructions in the thread - and am working with 13.0.1 - and still am only exporting low res files.

Having just discovered this problem while facing my first print deadline since updating to CC2018, its not so great to learn I have to revert to 2017 to get what should be a very basic function completed. Considering the time constraints, this seems to be the only option.

Report · Jan 27, 2018

Update - Once installing the 2017 version and deleting the preferences again, I continued to have the same export problem in the older version of InDesign as well. So - I had to re-create the layout in Illustrator - exported it and came out with a properly high resolution PDF file - 11.9MB instead of 998kb.

Report · Jan 30, 2018

Just out of curiosity, what is everyone's settings for color conversion when exporting? I had two prefs setup (one for proof w/ color conversion, one without and w/ marks and bleed for print). When exporting as the latter, no image resolution issue, when doing it with the former, major issues.

Report · Mar 15, 2018

Hi rmdtulsa

i had the same problem. I had tried every option to change it. Then i saw an option in the "pdf export menu" called : Optimise for Fast Web View. Once i disabled that option the exported pdf's where in "high res" . i hope that it will help you!

Report · Mar 15, 2018

Hi maarten0228 ,

thank you for the comment. What is the exact version of your InDesign CC 2018 ?
Did you update to CC 2018.1 ?

Regards,
Uwe

Report · Apr 02, 2018

I was having the same issue, and I called Adobe for a quick fix! I'm sure you've already tried this, so forgive me if it's old news and you're on to more advanced problems. Here is what I did to fix it: File -> Export -> Save As: 'Example'; Format: Adobe PDF (Interactive) -> Save -> Compression -> Compression: JPEG (Lossy); JPEG Quality: High; Resolution (ppi): 300 -> Export -> Okay

Woohoo! Hope this helps!

Report · Jul 17, 2018

I know everyone is saying you verified resolutions, but I just went through this, so I'm going to say here what I did and you can see if that works for you. I'm not sure step one is necessary or not, but the gist is you have to uncheck the optimize for fast web view option when you export. The idea is to make sure it's not optimizing at all, not for print... Now if you were doing an ebook, you might want to optimize.

1. I first changed my PDF settings in the Print (non In Design).

File > Print > Set up > OK (for warning about presets) > Preferences > Default Settings to Press Quality in dropdown > Edit > changed resolution from 2400 dpi to 3000 dpi > OK > saved the preset...

From here you can cancel the rest out because it won't work with just that. But it created a nice preset to adjust to better dpi.

2. File > Export > Chose a file name > Dropdown to my new preset on the top by Adobe PDF presets > in General Tab under options, uncheck "optimize for fast web view" > Export

Report · Jul 17, 2018

michelleg94011094 wrote
you have to uncheck the optimize for fast web view option when you export. The idea is to make sure it's not optimizing at all, not for print...

Optimize for fast web view optimizes how the data is stored in the PDF, allowing for directly accessing page X without having to load all the preceeding pages. There is no quality penalty using that. I suppose, the files are marginally bigger, as the optimizer needs to ensure that any oage does not depend from the preceeding page.

michelleg94011094 wrote
changed resolution from 2400 dpi to 3000 dpi > OK > saved the preset...

I hope this is only a typo. 2400 dpi is never needed, except for scanning things that are extremly small and need to be reproduced enlarged.

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer

Report · Apr 12, 2021

I don't know. That's just what I did that made it work. And it worked.

Report · Sep 11, 2023

We are currently using the latest version of InDesign -- 18.5 v 64. Creative Cloud Desktop says we have the latest version. But we still discovered the low-res PDFs resulting from high-res images even when using compression specs that say do not make the images lower than 300 dpi.

I tried the suggestion others posted previously: Edit / Preferences / File Handling / Check Links Before Opening Document. It made my document Verrrrryyyyy slow to open and eeeevvvveeeeeeeennn sllllllooooooowwwwweeeerrr to export, but at least the result was 300 ppi.

Tried it twice, and it worked twice. But I saw that many have people said this fix wasn't reliable all the time. So I will continue to be skeptical that 2018 can produce 300 dpi PDFs, and check them using Preflight.

Report · Sep 11, 2023

Hi @julietw99713499 ,

if you are unsure of the results of PDF export regarding image downsampling:

Just don't do it. Just do not downsampling of images at all. If you prepare PDFs for e.g. offset printing downsampling is not required.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

Report · Sep 12, 2023

That is not the issue at all. You have completely missed the point.

Report · Sep 12, 2023

Hi @julietw99713499 ,

so you have turned off downsampling altogether and you still get lowres PDFs ?

I'd like to see a sample document packaged.

Thanks,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

Report · Sep 12, 2023

If preflight is green and resolution in images is acceptable it could be the transparency flattening settings that have been set to rasterise at a too low resolution. Normally you can set transparency flattening settings.