Rasterize plugin for indesign?

i think the easiest way is to rasterize the vector image in Photoshop and drag it back to indesign

On a Mac, you can do it very easily with Automator I found out (the complete rasterization, not the partial stuff though), way easier and faster than with photoshop tricks. You can either make it as folder action, tackling all PDF export to that folder, or you can make a stand alone app. Trowing your PDF on that will do the trick.

How to set up Automator?

Add the following 2 actions to the program:

• Convert PDF pages to images. Choose the intermediate file format: dpi, JPEG/PNG/TIF etc, CMYK or RGB
• New PDF from images

Save as application and done. Start throwing your PDF's on it to bitmapize them.

You can force your images through the transparency flattener.

Set your vector images to have a 99.9% opacity.

Then create a Transparency Flattener Preset (Edit>Transparency Flattener)

Name: Vect to Raster

Raster/Vector Ballance: (set to 1)

Line Art and text res (150 ppi)

Gradient and mesh res: 300 ppi

Say Ok

File>Export and choose PDF

Then in the Compatibility section choose Acrobat 1.4

Now go to the Advanced section and choose the Transparency Flatener you created.

You export to PDF now the vectors should have changed to Raster.

I am also searching for a way to easily create a pdf from InDesign that converts all vector graphics to raster of a chosen dpi. Like dmtetard I need it to quickly bring down pdf-sizes from around 30-60 mb to 3-7 mb intended for web-publishing. My work-around is to open every linked pdf / illustrator-file, saving or printing it as PDF - then opening this in Photoshop and saving it out as high-res .jpg (which I can always down-scale from the pdf-export-settings in InDesign). I'm aware that I can skip the Photoshop sted by exporting directly into raster from Illustrator. However this function often perform badly for various reasons. Alternatively, it would be so cool with a script that could be run from InDesign that converted a single selected inserted .pdf or .ai to .jpg or .png.

Can anyone point to or merely towards a solution, as this issue has been causing me headaches for years now.

I beg you all!

The only real way to do this without getting too complicated is by exporting a PDF out of InDesign and then bringing that PDF into Photoshop at 300dpi (if you are printing it) and then resaving as a jpeg or tiff, and then using Acrobat to make a new PDF from the file. You could, of course, automate all of that work flow if you really wanted to.

I don't know of a plugin that does this, but it could be done with a script. (It would do essentially what Joel suggested, but would call on InDesign itself to rasterize the page item, and then place that low-res image version in the file temporarily, and export the PDF.)

- We don't like to send many vectorial stuff like a new logo for example to customers that didn't pay yet (we had some abuse in the past) - Filesize: documents with links to complex illustrations can still be quiet big when exporting at "Smallest File Size" (10MB+, which can give email trouble) - To be sure the file looks and prints the same at every computer (not talking about color, but to avoid strange pdf artifacts)

I don't know about "strange pdf artifacts" but I would assume that the way to do this would be to handle it at the linked-file level. You build your vector logo in Illustrator, and once you're done, you export to a raster format and place that file in ID. I'm accustomed to placing low-res .jpg placeholders and then relinking en masse to .ai files. Perhaps there's a plugin out there that will handle this at the level of ID document or PDF export, but I would expect it to be a print-workflow tool, not a document-management tool. In fact, if I absolutely had to do something like this, I would investigate Acrobat tools like Pitstop Pro - I don't know that it would do precisely what you want, but that's where I'd expect to find a tool that would do something like this.