“how to set 300 dpi for documents in indesign”

Above is one of the search terms that carried some wayward internet surfer on to the sunny shores of ATCO beach earlier today. (Metaphors are cool!)

Resolution in InDesign

There really isn’t such a thing as a “high res” InDesign file. An ID file establishes links to external image files that aren’t contained within the “filename.indd” file on your computer. (This is why you include all of the original images when you’re sending the final document to the printer). These individual images that you’re linking into your ID document must be high res for printing purposes. If they are, then you’re good. You don’t have to change any settings in InDesign whatsoever.

“High Res” on Screen

Images placed in InDesign appear to be pixelated and of generally low resolution on screen. This is an artifact of older versions of the software designed to run on computers with slower processor speeds. Every time the image scrolls around the viewing window the computer has to redraw it. Presenting images as low-res on-screen graphics speeds up this process.

As long as your placed image is 300 dpi (see below), there’s nothing wrong with the onscreen preview image. It’s just showing up that way to expedite your interaction with the document and to save on processing power. To see a the image in all it’s crisp glory, right click on it and select “Display Performance>High Quality Display” from the pop-up menu.

What I mean by “High Resolution”

Resolution is a product of the physical size of a file (height and width in whatever unit of measure is preferable to you) AND dots per inch (dpi). This is key, because it’s possible to resample a low res file to be 300 dpi but it will be extremely small in physical size (think postage stamp small).

To be truly high resolution, an image needs to have a resolution setting of 300 dots per inch at the size with which it is to be printed. You can make it smaller in InDesign, but you can’t make it much bigger without losing the crispness of the image.

If you have images placed in InDesign that are 300 dpi, AND they are either the same size as when they were placed in the file (or smaller), then you’re good. Your file will be “high res” in the sense that the original question intended. (Even though that’s sort of a misnomer).

High Res PDF

You can create a PDF right out of InDesign by going to File>Export and then selecting PDF. To create a high resolution PDF, select “PDF X-1A” from the file size menu in the next screen.

X-1A is a standard set of export settings for PDFs that create high-resolution images from which 4 color process color separations can be generated (translation: you can send an X-1A to your printer and he’ll be able to make it look right).

Praise the lord and sound the trumpets…I finally got around to googling one of my most consistent vexations in InDesign: the dreaded “WTF black box around the placed URL from the client’s Word document.” An Example:

Without having done any research, I assumed this was just an artifact of placed text and tried to ignore it to the extent I could ignore something so glaringly wrong. Turns out, this is an indication of hypertext as far as InDesign is concerned. To lose these boxes you need to use the “Hyperlinks” panel (Window>Interactive>Hyperlinks). Highlight the text with the box around it and drag the corresponding hyperlink item in the Hyperlinks Window to the trash. It’s easy as that.

This post answered this question for me. So J.J., whoever and wherever you are, a tip of that hat and a beer in your honor. Thanks.

-oAk-

Some of the people who find themselves here at ATCO have done so by searching for a specific question about InDesign. I’ve noticed that a lot of these questions have fairly straight-forward answers. It’s probably a safe bet that other people, somewhere out there in internet land are having the same issues. Perhaps this post (and the others that will follow) will help.

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InDesign makes page numbering easy with it’s “Current Page Number” character (From the “Type” menu select Type>Insert Special Characters>Markers>Current Page Number), but it automatically sets itself based on the document page number. What if you have a cover and an inside front cover page to start your document and you want to make the document page 3 to read as page 1?

Numbering and Section Options in InDesign

In the Pages Panel (Window>Pages if it’s not open), you’ll see a thumbnail preview of the pages in your document. Notice that page 1 has a black down-pointing arrow above it…

the Pages Panel

…this arrow indicates the beginning of a Section. All InDesign documents are broken down into at least one section. Unless you indicate otherwise, the entire document will be considered one section with the first document page representing page 1. This is why the section indicator arrow sits over the first page.

In order to change the page numbering, you need to create a new Section of the document. To do this, first select the page that you want to be your new page 1, then go to the options menu in the upper right corner of the Pages Panel and select “Numbering and Section Options.” The following dialogue box will appear:

Click the radio button in front of “Start Page Numbering at…” and set the field to whatever number you want (probably “1″).

Section Prefix

The Section Prefix is added to each page number for identification purposes. The best example I can think of is for printing. Say you want to print from the cover to the 4th page of your new section. You would specify the range as “1-Sec1:4.”

“Sec1:” is the default prefix, but you can change it to something less cumbersome.

Style

If you want preface indicators (”i, ii, iii”) or roman numerals, you would indicate that with this setting.

Once you’ve determined your settings click “okay.”

There will be a new, second black down arrow over your active page in the Pages Panel and the numbering below the pages should also have changed to reflect your new page numbering settings (it’s probably a one).

Now, all “Current Page Number” markers that you insert into the document will reset themselves to reflect the pagination of the Section.

A Couple of Things to Remember

As I mentioned above, your section prefix will now be added to every page number in the new section. Although it doesn’t appear as such in the Pages Panel, it will be reflected in the current page number indicator in the lower left corner of the document editing window. If you need to print, remember that you have to include this prefix in order to correctly indicate a page number in the new section.

Also, (and I’ve run into this a lot) note that the page number of the last page in your document as it appears in the Page Panel will no longer be the same as the page count of the document. The correct page count is in the lower left corner of the Pages Panel. In the above illustrations it’s the area that says “8 pages in 5 spreads.”

Emailing PDF proofs to clients is really convenient, as long as you can keep the overall file size under control. For most InDesign documents, this is as easy as selecting the “smallest file size” preset in the PDF export dialogue box, but for some projects, even “smallest file size” will result in ridiculous file sizes. This is especially true when the entire background of a file is a giant photoshop image. InDesign needs to chew through that whole placed file to properly render a PDF, and the result is a file size that will make your email client break out in a cold sweat.

Here’s a quick work around that will help when all else fails, and you’re still left with double digit megabyte file sizes on your PDF.

(Note…this works best for posters and other one-page InDesign files, or for individual pages in large page count documents that might be giving you trouble because they have a lot of images information, or transparency information.)

Basically, what we’re going to do is make a full-size high resolution image of the whole page of content. This will retain the detail we need to make a clear PDF, but it will “flatten” out all of the extra information on the page that complicates the PDF creation and increases the file size. Then we’ll use this image to create a much simpler PDF.

Once you’re finished with your design, export it as a PDF from InDesign. (In the file menu, click “Export,” then specify where you want the PDF to be created. I generally put it on the desktop).

Make sure to set the export preset to “PDF/X-1a:2001″ from the preset pull down menu at the top.

Click “Export.” InDesign will churn through your file and burn a high resolution PDF on the desktop (or wherever you specified the file to save).

Let Photoshop do the Heavy Lifting.

Once the file is created, open Photoshop and go to File>Open and select the PDF. In the dialogue box, make sure the resolution is set to 300 dpi. Don’t change the height and width dimensions. Now click “okay.” (You can only do one page at a time, so make sure you’ve selected the page that you want to process). Photoshop will work for awhile and eventually open a full-size, 300 dpi version of the PDF as a new image file. Click on Layer>Flatten Image and then save this as a .tiff or a .psd file somewhere handy.

Back to InDesign

Create a new page in your original InDesign document and place your newly created image file in this new page. If you line up the upper left corner of the image with the upper left corner of the page, the image should fit the entire page perfectly.

Now, go to File>Export and create a brand new “Smallest File Size” PDF of the new page only. The result is a PDF with all of the page information at a dramatically smaller file size. Happy emailing.

Still too large?

If you’re just sending the PDF for proof, you can also reduce the resolution in your PSD to 72dpi. As long as you don’t change the Height and Width dimensions, and as long as you do not resize the image once it is placed in InDesign, “Smallest File Size” export should still result in a good quality final PDF and drastically reduced file size.

Some Things to be Aware of

If you have “paper” in your InDesign file (by which I mean areas of “white” on the screen preview that represent areas of the final print where no ink would be laid down on the paper), Photoshop will treat these areas as transparent. Flattening the image will take care of this.

Update

I work at Notre Dame and, as such, every couple of weeks I need to deliver an advertisement for placement in the student newspaper the Observer. Usually I submit PDFs, but this turns into an absolute crap shoot because the Observer’s ad department has, apparently no qualms whatsoever about printing ads with missing font information or (at times) all of the fonts replaced by dots and dashes reminiscent of morse code. (I’m not making any of this up).

Recently I’ve started using the above technique to lock down the ad before it leaves my computer. The logic being: “If the ad ain’t got no fonts…the Observer can’t print my design with bad fonts or no fonts at all).