InDesign to Adobe Express to Print

Report · Dec 09, 2024

Just starting to work with this feature and I wondered if these files can be exported with crops and bleeds into Adobe Express so the end user can export to print.

Report · Dec 09, 2024

Why use this workflow at all? (Serious question; I see the place of AX but not as any particularly useful intermediate step for production from the major Adobe apps, which you obviously have.)

Report · Dec 09, 2024

I don't even want to use express. It is for a partner that wants to control the editing on the piece and it is ultimately a print piece. I just want to be able to tell them they can have it printed the same way I would have if done directly in InDesign. I just don't know the answer. To answer your question not and ideal workflow and I would rather not.

Report · Dec 09, 2024

in Adobe express there's an option for crops and bleeds

Report · Dec 09, 2024

thank you. looks like the bleeds like expanding the elements have to happen in express.

Report · Dec 09, 2024

Ugh, to be honest. A circular workflow that ends with you sending her a print-ready PDF with all proper crops and bleeds will... avoid many, many problems. The path you present will almost certainly end up with problems and faults at the prepress/print stage that will have to be resolved in that manner anyway... after frustration and hard feelings all around.

Report · Dec 09, 2024

100% I am not a fan of this proposed process

Report · Dec 09, 2024

Understood.

I am in a seeming minority of designers and providers who will say "No, I'm not going to do that stupid thing." I am greatly outweighed by the majority who believe the client is always right, all jobs must be done as requested no matter how badly the work is defined, and some pay for tons of work and hassle is preferable to no pay at all. 😛

I suppose it's a bit of a luxury.

Report · Dec 12, 2024

Not all designers have clients, some have bosses that ask you to create something a certain way that has the ability for an end user to edit it. Say to change the dates in the future, or edit names, without having to put a ticket in to an internal team for small edits when they're otherwise busy with larger projects. Saying I'm not going to do that stupid thing, doesn't always go so well in those instances.

To answer the OP's question - as of yet, it doesn't export the bleeds when sending from ID to Express because the bleeds aren't on as default in Express. What I do is after turning the bleeds on in Express, whatever the background is, I export separately and drag it into the project so I have the full size including the bleed I'd set in ID.

Report · Dec 12, 2024

Not all designers have clients, some have bosses that ask you to create something a certain way

Understood. And sometimes you bust buns and do it, if at all possible. Other times you walk them through just how difficult that task is, no matter how simple and quick they conceived it of being. There's not much difference between a client who wants the moon, and a boss who wants the pretty moon, in pink, and without any other task falling behind... because they read some gosh-wow account of how these new online E-Z tools will do everthing, backwards and in high heels, with AI.

I know that's not necessarily a useful answer, but sometimes the right answer is a (tactful) version of "Sorry, boss, that won't work because it's stupid." As in "I could do it that way, but at the cost of a lot of time for a second-rate result because these tools/systems don't quite interact as well as the marketing brochure you read says they do."

The wish for boss/C-level ability to muck with the things we do, at their leisure and with no skills, goes back a long, long ways. We're not there yet, ChatGPT and Adobe AI notwithstanding. So we can make bosses unhappy by spending a week trying to do something stupid, and that will make all these "secondary" users unhappy because they look stupid, or we can make them unhappy by telling them, with polite words and diagrams, that it's ~~stupid~~ unworkable in the first place.

Report · Dec 12, 2024

Spending a week? I geniunely spend no extra time creating something in InDesign simply because I export a version for Express. I finish what I'm doing, export the PDFs, send a version to Express and it's done save for a small tweak. Here's a recent example - a seating chart for an event. I built the first draft of it, exported to Express and then from there the marketing communications manager that was working on the event was able to adjust the names, or which table that name was sitting at without having to come back to me every single time. That actually saved me a lot of time, and about 6 rounds of edits. Since the graphics were locked and only the text was editable, it looked exactly how I had intended it to look from the onset. It's hardly unworkable!

Report · Dec 12, 2024

Okay. I guess I misread your first inquiry, and intent, here.

I never lose sight of how lucky I have been to be able to spend the last third of my career saying "No" as needed. 🙂

As for unworkable... the more experienced among us here have seen many tales of woe when an Adobe process is changed, abandoned or left without further support and updates; the many-many who came to rely on them as part of their daily workflows and paychecks are left in truly sorry situations. So you might check back with me/us on "workable" in a year or so.

Report · Dec 13, 2024

While I appreciate the assumption that I am young enough to not be experienced, I am over 20 years into my career and in a leadership role. It was still the 90s when I first started using Adobe programs and I've been through all of those transitions also. But they're not wildly different from every other software developer. I've also seen the MS Office suite add things, then take them away, create new programs then as soon as they're part of your regular process, take them away or abandon them.

Is it annoying? Yes. Is it specific to Adobe? Not really. Just seems to be the way of the tech world. I would love to have Prelude back, it was far easier than logging raw video in Premiere. But alas, here we are. It doesn't really change the Adobe Express question though.

Report · Dec 13, 2024

Wasn't making any assumptions about your level of skill or experience, only nothing that you're 'new here' — and the collective community knowledge behind ID and Adobe apps is often at odds with the more general, outside understanding. For example, we've gotten a number of users here who have built whole business models on Publish Online, then run into crippling limitations, and (after some discussion) have never considered it may not be a forever thing, or unchanging.

I tend to drift into editorializing here, which may not be any entirely good thing.

I also have done this long enough, and have enough current independence, to have little patience with how boss types see our jobs, roles and processes. The demand that we create some form of very complex production that Susie in HR and Bob, the field sales guy can do without any need for these expensive tools or any skills really grates on me. Even things like forms are not... simple. And the effort put into things like sales fliers that Bob can customize in a few minutes for a presentation is immense and rarely produces either a good or lasting solution... so around we go again, and it's our fault (more precisely, our prima-donna ego-driven faults) that we can't just make something the boss can use.

My focus these days is specialty publishing, and I honestly weep for some of the desigers who have taken on immense projects requiring hours or days of cleanup and specialized fixing, for some fixed rate or low overall compensation... but don't have the backbone or financial flexibility to go back to demanding authors with the truth.

But, kudos and good luck if you've worked out a process that lets the semi-skilled use AX to do what should be done by a pro. 🙂

Report · Dec 13, 2024

An interesting development I've seen is the training that public relations and integrated marketing communications students receive in colleges and universities, at least in my country. They take desktop publishing as part of that, some very basic InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop courses because so many corporate marketing groups now don't have internal design teams, so it's up to the communications folks to manage things like editing existing pieces created by agencies (former and current), or doing basic tasks like hero images, posters, invitations, etc.

Those are the people who I find we most adapt things for an AX format for, not the random sales person. It's at least someone with a basic level of understanding, we just want to be able to provide them correct branding, in a nice design, that they can make minor adjustments to for changes that happen at a pace faster than can be accomodated by submitting a design ticket. For me, that's where it becomes advantageous in terms of resourcing.

I 100% agree with you though on the tools and skills note. I have spent a significant amount of my career explaining why I won't share packaged working files with people who like to play with Adobe on the weekend. AX is been the middle ground of control over what it looks like (and the ability to lock graphics down) but flexibility for the copy. I have tried using InCopy for this type of compromise in the past and I find it far more cumbersome a process than exporting to AX.

Report · Dec 13, 2024

My reaction is that few other areas think a few classes confers competence — try telling your company controller you took a few accounting classes, for example, or an ME that you took a semester of basic AutoCAD. The lack of understanding and respect for what we do — at the professional level — is often exasperating, and leads to all these "U can do it 2!" apps, tutorials and walk-throughs. Marketing types taking a few graphics classes... well. Let's leave it at "marketing types."

(People used to sidle up to John D. MacDonald to say, "You know, I always wanted to be a writer." His invariable response was, "What a coincidence! I've always wanted to be a brain surgeon!")

All a moot point, though. With the continued ascendance of the E-Z-2-Use tools coupled with AI, I'd bet 75% of the work in this field is going to go the way of the typing pool. And when everyone is "super," no one will be... but they won't even know the difference.

Report · Dec 31, 2024

I'm having the same issue. My original Indesign file has a bleed, but when I export it to Adobe Express it does not carry it over. I'd love if they fixed this bug so it carries over the bleed from Indesign.

Report · Jan 01, 2025

Is it a bug? It might be intentional. I pointed out earlier there's an option for bleed in the settings in Express.

For Express it's about displaying online and you don't need the bleed. But the option is there. I haven't tested any of it at all.

So what way do you see it working? How can it be improved?

I'd say it's more of a feature request than a bug.

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests

https://adobeexpress.uservoice.com/forums/951181-adobe-express