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PG in LA
Inspiring
March 9, 2019
Answered

image-traced file pixelating in inDesign

  • March 9, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 2748 views

I am using 2 photographic images in an inDesign document. Both have been Image Traced as high quality photos in Illustrator.

The main image I've placed in InDesign has been enlarged 200 percent and looks great.

The second image had the background removed in Photoshop with a clipping mask that was smoothed and expanded into the foreground figure.

It was also Image Traced as a high quality photo, with ignore white. In Illustrator, the result looks great. When placed into the InDesign file, and reduced to about 50 percent, it looks awful and pixelated.

I rarely use Illustrator, but wonder if this problem originates with my selecting process in Photoshop.

For comparison, when I place the original TIFF file (how I saved it, flattened, in Photoshop), into the InDesign document, it actually looks better than the Image Trace/vector version.

Hope this makes sense. Thanks.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer PG in LA

Thanks, Bill.

I'll try this tomorrow and keep you posted!


Hi Bill.

I feel a bit stupid, because the one thing I did not try was simply exporting my InDesign file as a high-quality print PDF.

It looks great.

I've never been so mislead by presentation view...I suppose this is telling me it's time to update?

I will try the combination ai file you suggested to see if it changes the appearance of my InDesign doc, just to see.

Thanks for all your help with this.

1 reply

jane-e
jane-e
Community Expert
March 9, 2019

Go to the View menu and choose Display settings > High Quality. Does it look okay now?

If so, there are a couple of other ways to change the view setting, but first: does this work?

P
PG in LAAuthor
Inspiring
March 10, 2019

Thanks.

No difference. Plus I keep viewing it in presentation mode.

And the other image-traced photo-based image looks fine, they're in the same document.

That's why I'm confused, both images were treated the same way in Illustrator.

Bill Silbert
Bill Silbert
Community Expert
March 10, 2019

Can you post a screen shot of what the image looks like in Illustrator and what it looks like in the InDesign file?

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