Creating a PDF/X-1a from InDesign

Transcription

1 Creating a PDF/X-1a from InDesign Recommendations for Application Settings, General Design Guidelines, and Exporting to a PDF/X-1a (Screen shots for this manual were created from a Mac. If you are using windows the menus may be a little different.) PDFs being created for the Send My Ad portal, must be exported as single page PDFs unless your ad is a 2-page spread. REV

2 Contents Adobe InDesign CS4 Settings...2 Adobe Illustrator CS4 Settings...3 Adobe Acrobat Settings...4 General Design Guidelines...5 Document Construction Colors Fonts and Text Attributes Transparency Graphic Elements Design Tips Overprint Exporting to PDFx1-A...9 1

3 Adobe InDesign CS4 (v6.0.6) Settings for Print Under the Edit menu, choose color settings and set them to the settings shown here: Under the View menu, turn on Overprint Preview Under the InDesign menu, Preferences, Display Performance, for the Vector Graphic slider move it all the way to the right. Under Edit menu, set Transparency Blend Space to Document CMYK Under Edit menu, set Transparency Flattener Preview to High InDesign menu to Preferences, Appearance of Black, and set both options to Display and Output Blacks Accurately. Note: Check Overprint black swatch at 100% only if you want all instances of solid black to overprint. If you want black elements to knockout uncheck this option. Black overprint is then controlled from the Windows > Attributes pallet. 2

4 Adobe Illustrator CS4 (v14.0.0) Settings Under the Edit menu, choose color settings and set them to the settings shown here: InDesign menu to Preferences, Appearance of Black, and set both options to Display and Output Blacks Accurately. Open Illustrator: pull down the Effect menu and choose Document Raster Effect Settings and select High (300 dpi). Under Edit menu, set Transparency Flattener Preview to High 3

5 Adobe Acrobat CS4 (v9.4.2) Settings On a Mac, under the Acrobat menu, select Preferences - General. On a PC under the Edit menu, select Preferences. Under Page Display: A B C UNCHECK Smooth Line Art and Smooth Images by unchecking these 2 options will make the Ghost Lines around rasterized pieces of the PDF disappear. If you still see lines after unchecking these options, then your PDF will print with the lines. C Use Local Fonts Specifies E whether the application uses D or ignores local fonts installed on your system. When deselected, substitute fonts are used for any font not embedded in the PDF. If a font cannot be substituted, the text appears as bullets and an error message appears. Show Art, Trim, & Bleed Boxes Displays any art, trim, or bleed boxes defined for a document. To view the size of the Boxes, under the Document menu, choose Crop Pages. Pull down the Menu and choose which box you want to check the size. Size appears under the preview on the right. B A Blue Line - indicates the BLEED box Red Line - indicates the TRIM box D Use Overprint Preview Specifies whether Overprint Preview mode is on only for PDF/X files, never on, always on, or set automatically. When set to Automatic, if a document contains overprints, then Overprint Preview mode is activated. The Overprint Preview mode lets you see (onscreen) the effects of overprint settings applied to the file, and any ink aliasing applied to the document. Always Show Document Page Size Displays the page measurements beside the horizontal scroll bar. 4

6 General Design Guidelines Document Construction Build document page size to the final page TRIM size. Extend the bleed 1/8 bleed on all 4 sides of your layout. Build all pages the same orientation and right reading. Pages must display with the head of the page at top of the display. Keep type and all non-bleeding images at least 1/4 inside final trim. Delete all unnecessary pages Colors Define all colors as CMYK builds unless the color will print as a PMS color on press. Check that all Spot colors have been converted to process unless you are printing a spot color. Total area ink density shout not exceed SWOP standard of 300% Spot colors must not have any alternate color spaces other than CMYK. A good Rich Black recommendation is 40% Cyan, 30% Magenta, 30% Yellow, 100% Black. Spot color NOTE! Do not place a spot color and a transparent element so, that they overlap each other. This is because the spot color may change to process color in the area the elements are overlapping, when so called transparency flattening task is done. Metallic spot colors (like silver) must be knocked-out from other colors, because of their high opacity and quite weak trapping features. Fonts and Text Attributes Final spell check has been done and there are no misspelled words. Check under the Type Menu/Find Font to make sure all fonts are the correct type. Use at least 10 point type for reverses Align type using tabs, not the space bar Avoid 100% four-color type. (Equals 400% total ink density which is noncompliant). TEXT SHOULD ALWAYS BE ON THE TOP MOST LAYER. This is important when the text box is overlapping any box that contains a blend, drop shadow, or anything with transparency applied. Select the text box with the Selection Tool, under the Object menu, Arrange, Bring to Front. Transparency (any object that interacts with another object; e.g. shadows made in InDesign, or a.psd file with removed background and without clipping path) Numerous blends in one file can cause complications in the ripping process. It is highly recommended that you build complicated art and backgrounds in Photoshop and flatten them before bringing them into your layout program. 5

7 Place objects that are totally opaque (Text and line art) on top of any transparencies. (Manually select them and under the Object menu - Bring to Front. Transparency flattening is a task, which needs to be done before plate output. Exporting a PDF file from InDesign, the flattening is done only when the PDF format is 1.3. If you have used spot colors and transparent elements on a same page, check the file carefully before sending your file for print. Graphic Elements Do not save TIFF or EPS files with embedded color management profiles. Do not enable your page layout applications color management tools, as these settings may be lost once your files leave your production environment. Minimum rule widths of.25 points, do not use hairline. Color rules will look best if their width is at least 1 point. Nesting files within files can cause errors and is not recommended in files intended for print. Images meant for high-resolution output should be no less than 1-1/2 times the printing line screen. Most publications print at 150 LS, so minimum of 225 dpi is required. (a 300 dpi image can be increased to 133% in InDesign before falling below the minimum of 225 dpi) dpi for Bitmap images. Zip and JPEG (maximum quality) compression May be used in images. All images are in correct color space, e.g. cmyk. RGB, LAB, and ICC based colors must be converted to CMYK for print. Crop unwanted graphic elements in an illustration program. Make sure that all picture boxes have fill other than NONE (use Paper) Design Tips- Although design and layout programs support many ways to create a document, some things should be avoided as they can cause problems in some plate making systems. InDesign Fat Type When type is wrapped around an image, or even if it flows near it, the type can appear fattened or bold when the PDF is created. This is the result of transparency flattening, layering, and how the PostScript file is written. When InDesign writes the PostScript file, it must flatten all elements on the page into one layer. In doing this it can rasterize type that intersects an image even though this might not be apparent (it may intersect the part of the image that is not visible because it is outside of the picture box mask). The simple way to prevent this is to make sure that the type is above the image. To do this you can build your type on a layer above they image or select the type and choose object Arrange Bring to Front. Another method is to Outline the affected text or linework while in InDesign. InDesign or Illustrator Gradients and Vignettes Vector gradients and vignettes made directly from InDesign or from Illustrator can be very complex to RIP and take excessive time to make plates. Rasterizing the gradient or vignette in Illustrator or Photoshop (at 300 dpi) and then placing it into your layout program as an image will greatly reduce, 6

8 Overprinting - To view your PDF file as it will print, you need to turn on the Overprint Preview in Adobe Acrobat Professional. Under the Preferences/Page Display, set your Use Overprint Preview to Always. Also you should turn off in the Rendering section the Smooth line Art and Smooth Images - this will eliminate any Ghost Lines seen in the PDF that are caused by flattening when the PDF is generated. A. Set 100% Black to Overprint. Example: 100% black element on a 4-color photo. Print result: The tones in the picture can be seen under the 100% black element, because it cannot fully hide the picture. The darkness of the black element varies according to the tones in the picture. How to correct: Change the tone of the element to something other than 100% black, e.g. add 5% cyan or make a rich black. The image will then be knocked-out under the element. Correct Printed result 7

9 B. Overprinting - Set CMYK White to Knock-Out Example: White text defined incorrectly to Overprint. If you are viewing this file in Acrobat with Overprint Preview on, you can only see the green bar, because white text is transparent in CMYK (4-color process) printing. Overprint Overprint Viewing White Overprint file in Acrobat with Overprint Preview turned on Corrected PDF - making the white text Knock-out C. Set colors to Knock Out Example: Text or overlapping objects are defined incorrectly to Overprint. In the printed product, the text and objects should have a blue color. The printed version rendered a dark gray or darker green color, because the yellow surface is not knocked-out under the text and object. Overprint Overprint Desired Result Printed Result 8

10 Exporting a PDFx1a from InDesign In order to handle fonts in our preferred method, which is to embed whole fonts rather than subsetting, first in InDesign go to Preferences pane and choose General. Set the Font Downloading and Embedding option to , as shown, Click OK to save the change. Create a new Adobe PDF preset. To the File menu, choose Adobe PDF Presets> Define. This is where we will make a new preset based upon our PDFx1a settings. Here you can choose NEW... and follow the specifications for each category on the following pages. 9

11 For this example, my preset is already named SMA ADS Export. You can name your preset whatever you would like. This new preset will be saved in your Export PDF drop down menu. This is the General Tab, please set your preset based on these tab settings. Compression Tab: Please enter in all the information shown for the Compression tab. 10

12 Marks and Bleed Tab: Please enter in all the information shown for the Marks and Bleed tab. You can Opt to not include any Marks on your PDF, as you will trim them off in the Ad Portal. You may find them helpful for positioning. For you fractional ads that don t bleed, then set your Bleed to zero. Output Tab: Please enter in all the information shown for the Output tab. Click on the Ink Manager to make sure there are no unnecessary spot colors. If found, click on All Spot to process, or convert colors in the swatches palette. 11

13 Advanced Tab: Please enter in all the information shown for the Advanced tab. This is the last tab you will need to worry about. When you click on OK your preset will now be in your list of export options for you to choose when exporting a PDF. Once you file is finalized, and you want to export to PDFx1a, go to the File menu, choose Export, or use the quick key option of Command E. 12

14 This will prompt you to Save As: You need to enter in a file name and a destination of where you want to save the PDF file. From here you can choose the new Export setting you just made and In- Design will export a PDFx1a File. Files intended for the Send My Ad Portal must be saved as a SINGLE PAGE PDF. If sending 3 ads from the same InDesign file, save out 3 separate PDF files. See below for SPREAD ad export settings. For an ad that will print as a spread in a publication, save it out as a one page PDF file by using these settings. 13