Lightening Images/Photos in InDesign

[boca_c]

Can someone help me how to lighten images (.gif) that I have dragged and dropped into InDesign (CS5) - when the finished product is printed, some images are too dark?

[Eugene Tyson]

Gif is not a print format - it's a web format.

Where did you drag and drop them from?

And, Indesign is not an image editor. You will need photoshop to edit images and adjust the brightness and contrast, perhaps the overall levels too. But save the file as a tiff, not a gif.

[Steve Werner]

As Eugene points out, GIF is definitely a substandard format for printing. It only supports 256 color values and low resolution.

[boca_c]

i'm dragging and dropping from a folder with a library of images.

this is for a product brochure, and i want the images clear cut (so we can put drop shadow around it) - correct me if I am wrong, but TIFF doesn't allow clear cut images (just a box) and GIF is clear cut images...

[MW Design]

You can have transparency in a TIFF file, but I would use PNG format.

Still, the points above are valid. Do any editing/changing in PS or another image editing application.

Take care, Mike

[Rik Ramsay]

correct me if I am wrong, but TIFF doesn't allow clear cut images (just a box) and GIF is clear cut images

Not sure what you mean by TIFF doesn't allow clear cut images?! The image types you describe are very different from one another. In a print environment, TIFF, PSD and high res JPEGs can be used. GIF and PNG are web images and are not suitable for high quality printing.

Any images you place in your brochure should be edited in Photoshop, saved in a suitable format and placed into InDesign. The images 'effective' ppi should be 300 at print size. GIF will not achieve that.

[Peter Spier]

By "clear cut" I presume you mean transparent background silhouettes. As Mike mentioned, Tiff does support transparency, if you save it that way, and apparently has les tendency to show a black halo than a .psd when used this way.

Another option is the use of clipping paths, either drawn, or by using ID's built in ability to detect edges in high-contrast images. Object > Clipping Path > Options...

[boca_c]

Thanks Peter - thats what I was after