Placed file formats for print-ready PDFs

[Will Price]

Am I being old school?

Before making a print-ready PDF, I usually flatten all my placed PSDs, replace them as .tiff, and then convert all my AIs files into flattened .eps files. 

Is this necessary anymore? I get no errors in pre-flight with the raw imported PSD and AI files, which are all set to CMYK and 300dpi/raster anyway.

So, can Indesign export to a print-ready PDF without issue?

What's the best practice these days?

[BobLevine]

In short, you are making a ridiculous amount of extra work for yourself. In fact, you should really be placing properly tagged RGB images, not CMYK.

And to be clear, none of this is new. What you're describing is essentially a 20-year-old workflow. Do yourself a favor and talk to your printers about this.

[Will Price]

So modern workflow is all RGB (AI and PSD), and you let InDesign handle the colour conversion and colour profile?

[Eugene Tyson · Accepted solution]

It can be a mix of RGB and CMYK - if you're supplied RGB then leave them as RGB - unless you are colour correcting them, if there's no changes to them or they're not colour critical then leave them. 

https://creativepro.com/import-rgb-images-indesign-convert-cmyk-export/#:~:text=Even%20better%2C%20s....

[Eugene Tyson]

Yeh no need to do any of this. 

Place what's supplied - if you are making edits then save rasters as Tiff or PSD - or if it's a Photoshop file with text layers or vector masks/shapes - then Photoshop PDF with editing capabilities

.ai is preferred over .eps

EPS are quite archaic. 

[Will Price]

Excellent, thanks for the info.

[Robert Tkaczyk]

PDF is native format for Adobe Illustrator. 

[rob day]

I usually flatten all my placed PSDs,

Also, an advantage of placing layered .PSDs over TIFFs is, a PSD’s layers can be controlled via InDesign’s Object>Object Layer Options...

And, placing a flattened copy of a layered Photoshop file doesn’t do anything because a placed, layered PSD always gets flattened on the PDF Export even with a preset that keeps transparency live like PDF/X-4.

A placed, layered .PSD with Object Layer Options open:

Exported to PDF/X-4, inspecting the image with Object Inspector:

[Willi Adelberger]

Flatten PSDs before importing in InDesign is not so good as you loose transparency and the possibility to use Layer Compositions. There is nothing wrong using layered PSDs. You need not to convert a PSD to TIFF except when the images are very large and PSDs would not support those dimensions

As other said, keep RGB images in RGB.

[Robert Tkaczyk]

Like others already said - you can put almost anything into InDesign - and as long as color profiles are applied and are correct - there is no need to do extra work. 

The only reason to use CMYK is when you need to have full control over the output - high quality catalogs, etc. 

[rob day]

The only reason to use CMYK is when you need to have full control over the output - high quality catalogs, etc.

Hi Robert, The color management for RGB-to-CMYK conversions is identical in Photoshop and InDesign, so the only case for making the conversion in Photoshop would be when you need to force a color value via an additional color correction after the conversion to CMYK—for example you need to get at a CMYK color that is outside of the source RGB gamut, e.g. 100% cyan (100|0|0|0) is not available if the RGB editing space is sRGB.

That problem would be very unusual if you edit in a large gamut RGB space like AdobeRGB or ProPhotoRGB. In Photoshop you can turn on Proof Colors and use Photoshop’s Info panel to preview how color will convert to the destination CMYK space and view accurate output numbers without actually making the conversion.