Viewing page with placed image causes document to be marked as dirty (needs saving)?

[Eric Reuss]

When I open an InDesign file, after I first view any portion of a page that has a placed image on it, roughly 2-10 seconds later the document gets marked as dirty (asterisk by the filename). It's odd, and kind of annoying, both because of the needless prompt for saving when I close it, and because when I'm deep in the weeds opening and looking through multiple documents it can make me second-guess whether I actually *do* need to save something.

I assumed this was a bug and made a report... but then I thought to try it in earlier versions, and it's happening all the way back to 14.0.3. (I jumped straight from CS3 to CC recently.)

So now I'm second-guessing myself: is this actually expected behavior? Is something really being changed / updated when a page containing a link is rendered? (If it's just that I have some preference set that's, I don't know, dynamically adjusting some layout setting based on linked images, I'm going to feel both kind of silly and rather relieved.)

[EDIT: I don't seem to be able to make >1 correct answer show; the TL;DR is:

 • No, it's not expected behavior;

 • It only happens for PNGs, and only when the PNG is at higher than 72dpi resolution.]

[Barb Binder]

No. Nor can I replicate the behavior. Was the file you are opening created in an earlier version than you are using now? Are you opening the file from a local drive, or a network drive or a file-sharing service?

~Barb 

[Eric Reuss]

While I did first notice it with a file created in an earlier version, that's not the only place I'm seeing it - I can reproduce with a completely new, blank file to which I add a single small linked image. (See linked bug-report for exact steps.)

The image file is on a local drive, in the same directory as the .indd file.

I do have two services that monitor local files and sync them to the cloud, but if I pause them the behavior continues. (And even if they were doing something weird and touching any file I open, I'd expect to see it after any file-open, rather than only happening when I go to a page with a linked image.)

[Laubender]

Hi Eric,

thank you very much for posting this!

I can see this issue as well with my German InDesign 2020 version 15.1.1.103 on Windows 10.

Also placed a PNG file ( with transparency ).

Now I tested with CC 2019 and yes, the issue is there as well.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[Laubender]

Hi Barb,

did you place a PNG file with transparency?

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[Laubender]

Hi Eric,

tested on with a different kind of image:

A tif file with no transparency: 1-Bit

Here I cannot see the issue.

Either the cause of the issue is the PNG file format and/or the transparency in the file, I think.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[Barb Binder]

OK,  tried it again with a PNG with transparency. Followed these steps:

1. Create a new empty document.
2. Add a second page to the document.
3. Place image, onto the page you're viewing (I did a PNG)
4. Save and close the document.
5. Open the document.
6. Wait 2-20 seconds several minutes, doing nothing to change the document.

The asterisk never appeared. 

Mac 10.15.5

InDesign 15.1.1

~Barb 

[Eric Reuss]

I just did some more testing, and found:

 • The behavior does not happen with TIF, JPG, or Photoshop formats - only PNG.

 • The behavior does not happen if the PNG is set to 72 pixels/inch or lower. (Tested 20, 50, 70 - 75, 80, 150, 300)

 • The behavior doesn't seem to care about any of the following: contents of the PNG (tried flat white, black, grey, red); whether the file is RBG/CMYK/Greyscale; or PNG file-size option ("Largest" / "Medium" / "Smallest").

It didn't seem to make a difference whether I did 1x1 pixel PNGs or 1.5"x1.5" PNGs, but I didn't do much size testing.

[Laubender]

Thanks, Barb.

Hm. Then perhaps another component is responsible for this?!

Maybe its my view settings? I always work with High Quality as default.

Or the settings for transparency reduction?

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[Barb Binder]

The behavior does not happen if the PNG is set to 72 pixels/inch or lower. (Tested 20, 50, 70 - 75, 80, 150, 300)

Effective PPI or Actual PPI?

~Barb

[Eric Reuss]

Actual is what I observed - if I use Photoshop to create two identical 1x1px grey-background PNGs, choosing 72 pixels/inch in the New Document dialog for the first and 73 pixels/inch for the second, the first PNG does not cause the behavior while the second does.

I haven't messed around with scaling inside of InDesign to see if that affects it.

[Barb Binder · Accepted solution]

Well, I just replicated it.

In my tests, I started with a transparent .psd (which is what I would normally use), then this morning used Photoshop's File > Export > Quick Export as PNG (72 ppi/225 ppi) and finally used File > Export > Export as and exported 2x the original size (72 ppi/450 ppi)—that's what did it. 

Eric, I would add a link to this thread on your bug report.

~Barb 

[Eric Reuss]

Thank you!

(And Uwe Laubender has already kindly linked my bug report back here. Thank you, Uwe!)