InDesign printing to PDF problems !!!

[ottoatom]

Hello!
I am working on my architect portfolio, and am having a big problem with indesign...

For my plans and elevations I am using PDFs printed out autocad (so I dont loose too much quality). My portfolio has know +-60 mb and 18 pages. It has aproximatly 30 PDFs in it, some of them are a bit heavy...

Now the problem is that when I print fom illustrator to a PDF file (so I can later on print it out on a plotter wich hasn't got InDesign, or send it through the web) the process crashes, resulting only in a .log file. WHY??!! lol... I'm getting quite frustrated.. the only way I found out of this is rasterizing some PDFs to Tiff in photoshop, but they loose a lot quality when printed, they get all blured out... Can anyone help me out on resolving this issue?..
THX!!

[SpugNothuson]

Any chance you could post us the details of the .log file?

Should be able to get to the root of the problem quickly with that info.

[ottoatom]

%%[ ProductName: Distiller ]%%
%%[Page: 1]%%
%%[Page: 2]%%
%%[ Error: syntaxerror; OffendingCommand: > ]%%
Stack:
/PaintProc
586.193
/YStep
531.725
/XStep
[530.725 586.193 531.725 586.193]
/BBox
1
/TilingType
1
/PaintType
1
/PatternType
-mark-

%%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%%
%%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%

hope it helps..

[SpugNothuson]

I believe that is an image problem.

Check your indesign file, start with .eps and/or .pdf that are linked to the file. Remove each one individually on Page 2 and keep trying to create a PDF after you remove each one. At some point the PDF should be created, obviously without the offending piece of artwork.

Once the culprit has been found open it in a programme that can fix it and do just that, sometimes it can be as simple as saving it back to itself.

Hope that helps.

[ottoatom]

ok, I removed all pdf and it is working fine now ;) but isn't there a way where indesign tells me where the problem is? Like a debugger or something... I dont have just one pdf, I have severall ones eheh and it's going to take me a while before I can figure out which one is wrong..
tx again ;)

[SpugNothuson]

If you have Acrobat Professional you can try Optimizing the PDF.

Advanced > PDF Optimizer...

Check all the settings that will be applicable to you and then run the optimizer (the flatten transparency may be the key). This will resave the Document and hopefully solve the issue.

Make sure you save to a new name or keep the backup, odd things can happen in the optimizer.

[ottoatom]

ok, that's a good tip for optimizing PDFs before sending them to indesign ;) but what I was asking is if there is some command on InDesign wich helps me out spotting what pdf, jpg, tiff or whatever I inserted in the indesign document that is causing the printing process to fail...
thx!

[SpugNothuson]

Ah yes, forgot to answer that bit.

In InDesign there is the Preflight. File > Preflight...

This will tell you about missing fonts, RGB images and some other bits. But it can't examine a PDF for potential issues.

Acrobat Professional also has a Preflight. Advanced > Preflight...

It has a very verbose way of saing things though and there are far better 3rd party Preflighters out there for PDFs. Check out www.enfocus.com they have some nice products there.

[doubting_thomas]

I hate posting at the same time as another person. Nothing new to see here, move along.

[ottoatom]

Something weird happened.. I moved out and in all pdfs on page 2 and now it works well... I havent reloaded anything in page 2.. it now works correctly :S I dont understand what happened there...

And now I am trying to put back a PDF on page 3 I had changed to TIFF before (it was the only way to make the printing process work on that page) and I really cant make that work... I did a preflight of it in adobe acrobat pro and found an error: ICC based color space was used and made it uncompatible with acrobat 4... could that be the problem?? somehow I dont think so..

[SpugNothuson]

I hate posting at the same time as another person. Nothing new to see here, move along.
A pain isn't it.

Something weird happened.. I moved out and in all pdfs on page 2 and now it works well... I havent reloaded anything in page 2.. it now works correctly :S I dont understand what happened there...
Odd, but that's the way it goes sometimes. Just wish it was all the time.

And now I am trying to put back a PDF on page 3 I had changed to TIFF before (it was the only way to make the printing process work on that page) and I really cant make that work... I did a preflight of it in adobe acrobat pro and found an error: ICC based color space was used and made it uncompatible with acrobat 4... could that be the problem?? somehow I dont think so..
I've heard of Color Spaces giving problems before, but not very often. The most common problems are down to fonts not being embedded in the PDF and Transparency issues.

You can try messing with the PDF settings in InDesign when you go to make the final one. Try changing Colour Conversion in the Output Settings to No Colour Conversion. Also try Profile Inclusion Policy, change that one to Don't Include Profiles.

This may solve it, it could also make there be more errors, it's a Suck it and See scenario.

[ottoatom]

It worked! :D But a there's a thing I dont understand.. I used to print to pdf through the "print..." command in the file menu, now the only way I found where to change the settings you mentioned was through the "Export..." in the same menu. It took a little bit more time to do it though, but seemed to resolve my issue.

ThX SpugNothuson! You have been very helpfull and patient! Just a last question, if you would be doing the same thing as me, like filling pages with heavy architect plans elevations and so on, would you do it as I am doing? eheh Thx again!!

[SpugNothuson]

Excellent. Glad to help.

I almost only ever use the Export function, occasionally I'll print to a postscipt file and get Distiller to make a PDF for me but those times are getting rare now. The Export function is quite powerful now.

I've had the luck not to have to deal with many Architects plans, I take it they're from a CAD programme. The few that I have used I've checked the eps and/or PDF and then placed them as you have in InDesign.

[ottoatom]

ok, you cleared my confusion about the Print... / Export... commands. EPS does not retain weight parameters for diferent lines defined in CAD programs for what I have seen, so PDF is more powerfull for that matter!
Tx again for all your help!

[Broacher]

I haven't touched an A-cad file in years, but I thought that it had a fairly sophisticated PDF export module itself-- that is, there are settings to facilitate more efficient and reliable PDFs directly out of Acad.

No?

[ottoatom]

Acrobat professional's gives Autocad the ability to export to PDF in a much better way autocad does... But I dont understand very well all those options Acrobat has.. I only know how good the result is visualy speaking, but heavy PDFs make indesign crawl like hell, in workflow and in printing. Exporting 18 pages took me 20 minutes :S and I havent finished my portfolio yet..

The thing is that I usualy rasterized PDFs in photoshop for editing, and just this week started using InDesign with the ability to place it in the page and retaing the vectorial printing quality.. So I will maybe have to take a better look on all those options now on if I still want to use Indesign.. Best quality / best compatibilty settings anyone? ;)

[Broacher]

Most of the time, ACad files contain much, much, MUCH more vector info than you really need for a print job. Now that I think of it-- I DO work with these--indirectly. Our facilities department supplies us with ACad files of floorplans for helping us create building floorplan graphics. The problem though, is these PDFs are unbelievably detailed and complex-- not always visibly so!

I can open these OK in AI but it takes longer to throw out the junk and keep it in vector than to simply rasterize them into Photoshop at high rez (typically 600 dpi at full print size) non-anti-aliased greyscale-- make some edits. Then to high rez black and white. These are pure line drawings I'm talking about though-- so that's why I move to bitmap. Even at 600 dpi, a complex line drawing within Acrobat gets SUPER compressed-- always smaller than the RAW PDF file I started with, and so much easier to print.

[ottoatom]

I usually rasterized it to 300 dpi with antialiasing on and then work with them.. but printed, they always look blurred, as opposed to pdf that almost all the time look as good as if they where printed out autocad. Now you said you rasterize them at 600 dpi? geez, my poor little laptop would get on its knees if it was to be used for these kind of jobs.. is it standard for the industry? I always thought it was 300 dpi...
You also said you left the option AA off, doesn't the output looks jagged? even at 600 dpi? I'll have to check it out.. I thought raster files always get blurred in prints, whereas vector don't.
Hatching is my biggest problem.. and here in Portugal, we build everything in concrete lol... so I end up with lots of "concrete hatch" in my details, which sucks up ram and screws with InDesign..
I will try to rasterize some of my pure line plans to bitmap and see how they behave, thx for the tip!

[SpugNothuson]

At 600dpi you should get a fairly smooth print, I've rastered at 1200 before but that is unusual.

If it's just a Black and White image you're dealing with, get PhotoShop to raster it at 600dpi and in Greyscale mode. Anti Aliasing off, it is not your friend on Black & White jobs. Then finally go to Image > Mode > Bitmap. Make sure that the dpi here is also set to 600 and put it on 50% threshold.


Try printing that Bitmap file, it should be small enough for InDesign to handle quickly and depending on printer should like quite smooth.

[ottoatom]

I've tried what you suggested, and it seems that it gets almost as good as pdf files when you raster at 600 dpi.. though I think that it looks that way because I am printing on an inkjet printer, if I would print on a laser printer, the output would get blurred.. I have not tried yet, but the tests I had done before really convinced me that pdf files where a lot better than jpg or tiffs on Laser printers. Do you think laser printers blur more raster files than vector ones compared to inkjet?

On that AA thing, I printed a jpg at grayscale rastered at 600 dpi with and without AA, and for what I noticed with AA looks a little bit better than without, I don't know again if it's because I'm printing on an Inkjet..

[Broacher]

As I mentioned, if it's black line work, keep anti-a OFF when you open the PDF as greyscale. And you must follow through with a mode change to black and white. Otherwise, the only printers that will give you crisp line edges (other than some exotic ones) will be inkjets as lasers and commercial film RIPs treat anything OTHER than a black and white raster as a halftoned-screened graphic--which will rip up those edges very quickly.

Can you confirm whether these are black and white or do they include colour?

[ottoatom]

some of them are black and white, others have grayscale gradients hatch aplied.. Does those count as colour?

So if I understand correctly, if I use 1 bit monochromatic bitmaps, crisp lines edges will be printed on all printers right? that's cool to know...

one more question.. In InDesign, when I export files do pdf, Isn't there an option to reduce DPIs on raster images to 450 when they exceed 300 DPI ? what is the point on rasterizing pdfs to 600 DPI if InDesign is going to reduce size later to 450 DPI ?

[Broacher]

Most of the press-quality job compression settings in Acrobat will downsample COLOUR or GREYSCALE images down to 300 dpi. But, the monochrome setting, which is on the bottom, is the one we're interested in line drawing work. It's usually set to downsample to 1200 anything with a rez of 1800 or higher. The compression is also usually set to CCITT Group 4-- which does AMAZING things to one-bit images in terms of reducing the number of bytes needed to losslessly store a very high rez 1 bit image.

See, with one-bit, you're bypassing the whole 'screening' or dither thing that most printers use and going right to the actual head printer head resolution (or thereabouts)-- that's the crispness factor, even at low point sizes. Nice to know: If you recolour a monochrome bitmap from within InDesign (by assigning it a non-black colour), to the Acrobat workflow, it's still a monochrome image (only the colour definition has changed). This can allow for a lot of creative and interesting workflows, if you're clever.

Oh, and those greyscale gradients? If they truly are greyscale, and they're significant, you'll have to think more carefully. If you don't intend to 'resize' the final monochrome image, you can do the same as you did before, only when it comes time to convert the high-rez greyscale rasterized version of the PDF to Bitmap mode, instead of '50% Threshold' you use 'Halftone' and set it to a dot line frequency and angle that will cover the range of printers you expect this to be printed to. What happens then is that PShop leaves anything that's 100% black as black, no dots on the edges. But anything that's not black (grey) gets fed through the halftone screen process. It even 'splits' the dots when they meet a black edge. Actually, this is a great trick to use for making custom screened ads for publication... again, if you know what you're doing.

Good luck!

[ottoatom]

Lol I always thought 3d was the hardcore of design industry.. I can see I was wrong. Lots of stuff to learn around here, and I am just glad theres a forum like this one to share knowledge..
You guys rock! thx a lot for your time AND patience!!
Cheers!

[Broacher]

I think both 3D and print have a strong hardcore element. But so does the web!

Um... we are talking about the same thing, right?

[ottoatom]

well, I'm talking about all those things you need to know about being a good artist.. In 3d there are lots of modeling, lighting, animating, skinning, shading, etc techniques you need to master to excel at it..
For designing and publishing I wasn't aware of all those million settings you needed to know in publishing matter, that is a world on its own..
As for web, yes I think there's also a lot to it. every art has its own difficulty I guess. I just said that because I wasn't aware that all those settings mattered so much eheh.. like ICC compatibility and so on..