InDesign 2.0: How to Export and Place Pages back into InDesign 2.0

Visit the new InDesign Prepress Section: Adobe InDesign: Prepress Techniques

aka: True PDF Workflow with InDesign 2.0.x

aka: Its time to stop using legacy EPS!

A common workflow in the Print and Prepress industry is exporting a page from applications such as PageMaker and QuarkXpress and placing these back into the application and printing.

For example 1: You have created a page for publication, and you also need to create a larger, poster size version.

Generically, you have a page in InDesign document “A” that needs to be incorporated into InDesign document “B”

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Traditionally, the process has been: Export the page as an EPS (Encapsulated Postscript) and place this back into a picture box in the layout application.

With the advent of InDesign 2.0.x, this workflow is outdated and potentially dangerous from a quality perspective.

The New, Modern workflow:

Step 1:

Export the Page from InDesign 2.0.x document “A” as a PDF, specifically a Acrobat 5.0 compatible PDF.

Step 2:

Import the PDF into InDesign 2.0.x document “B”. In this example, the PDF has been placed into another document. Here, the Links palette shows the source PDF exported from step 1 above.

Why use PDF?

1. PDFs are smaller than EPS files, and take less processing overhead to place in InDesign (no need to parse the Postscript)
2. Exporting Acrobat 5.0 PDFs from InDesign 2.0.x is extremely quick as there is no need to flatten the transparency contained in the InDesign document.
3. Any transparency in the InDesign 2.0.x document “A” remains unflattened in the exported Acrobat 5.0 PDFs. Once placed back into InDesign 2.0.x, it will recognise this and flatten the transparency inside the PDF before exporting as Acrobat 4.0 PDF or printing to Postscript
4. If expanding the size of the placed PDF, if flattened, there is the chance that the flattened elements lose quality – especially at the places where elements stitch together.