*** From the Archives ***

This article is from June 11, 2009, and is no longer current.

But Will It Print?

This article is excerpted from the April/May 2009 issue of InDesign Magazine, #29. Buy this issue or subscribe to InDesign Magazine.
In the days before digital publishing, the layout of publications or the creation of artwork for printing was almost always done by artisans — craftspeople who either worked with ink-stained hands in a printing shop, or who had been carefully schooled in the craft of printing.
Today, you’re often on your own when you create an InDesign document for commercial printing. This article’s valuable tips for preparing your job for printing will save you and your printer a few gray hairs.
To download the article as a PDF, click on this link or on the image below.

To open the PDF, you’ll need Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader. We highly recommend Adobe Reader 7.0 or above to view this PDF. Download the latest Acrobat Reader here.
To learn how to configure your browser for viewing PDF files, see the Adobe Reader tech support page.
To read about preflight specifically in InDesign CS4, go to “InDesign Tutorial: Preflight Files in CS4.”
 

Steve Werner is a trainer, consultant, and co-author (with David Blatner and Christopher Smith) of InDesign for QuarkXPress Users and Moving to InDesign. He has worked in the graphic arts industry for more than 20 years and was the training manager for ten years at Rapid Lasergraphics. He has taught computer graphics classes since 1988.
  • Anonymous says:

    I have two comments
    1. Adobe is not the only, nor were they the first supplier of a PDF rip
    2. I would recommend not subsetting fonts as recommended in the article. This practice causes problems for some rips and makes more difficult the editing the PDF if that becomes necessary. In other words, in the section on exporting PDFs, I would set the % to 0 instead of 100.

    Robb Lutton

  • Anonymous says:

    When printing a document from InDesign, I get all the wrong colours. Despite new ink, excellent glossy paper, the right colours are simply not there…. Hardly no resolution at all.

  • Terri Stone says:

    Ugh, you’re talking about the frustrating world of color management. Unless you color calibrate your printer and monitor, there’s no guarantee that what you see onscreen is what you’ll get from any printer.

    Resolution is another matter, however. This article might be helpful: https://creativepro.com/article/the-truth-about-resolution

    Terri Stone
    Editor in Chief, CreativePro.com

  • >