Welcome to Adobe InDesign CS: Prepress Features

InDesign, since version 1.5, has been on an steep development path. InDesign 2.0 added the revolutionary features related to Transparency. The impact of simply placing a Photoshop file with transparency provides the catalyst to dramatically change Print design to pre-press workflows.

InDesign CS (version 3.0, InDesign CS: Prepress Overview) added Separation Preview and Transparency preview: both elements critical to smoothing the Prepress workflow related to InDesign.

What more features can InDesign CS2 (version 4.0) add?

Custom Points-per-inch.

(Edit>Preferences, Units and Increments) This is the measurement of pica point. A seemingly trivial difference between 72dpi and 72.27dpi has split the graphic arts community since the invention of Postscript, and the use of desktop computers for typesetting. Photoshop for many versions has a preference to change the Points per Inch style. (for a complete rundown, visit: Font measurements and What is Font Size?)

Appearance of Black

(Edit>Preferences, Appearance of Black) When is Black the new Black? 100K, or Black, commonly used in type is generally set to overprint rather than knockout the elements below. This has been the default, but customisable setting in InDesign since version 1.0. (see Overprinting of [Black] in the Preference above). Please note: New Zealand readers, All Blacks has nothing to do with Rugby; a gentleman’s game played by thugs.

Note: this setting is also available in Illustrator CS2.

The On Screen options:

Display All Blacks Accurately: this will produce a visual difference between 100K Black and Rich Blacks; where Blacks are 100K + other colours.

Display All Blacks as Rich Black: this will visually darken all the Blacks in the document to the same intensity. This will therefore make the document appear different to how it will print.

The underlying breakdowns of the 100K [Black] swatch, and other rich blacks will remain unaltered in the document. This settings is just changing the visual appearance.

Printing/Exporting options (on non-Postscript output devices):

Output All Blacks Accurately: this will ensure that the underlying settings of swatches, Overprint settings are honored. This setting will result in the printed output having a difference between pure black and rich black.

Output All Blacks as Rich Black: this setting will alter the colours as output on RGB and Greyscale devices to match the 100K [Black] swatch. Or another way to think of this, 100K CMYK black is output as 000 in RGB.

Changes to Drop Shadow Generation

Drop Shadows, added in InDesign 2.0, whilst adding an element of depth and third dimension to designs – their composition has been simple and two dimensional.

To match the styles of shadows that can be created in Photoshop since version 5.0, Shadows in InDesign CS2 can have Spread and Noise added.

Spread increases the size of the shadow into the blurred area and reduces the radius of the blur. The larger the value for spread, the less diffused the shadow edge will appear and print.

Noise introduces some randomness to the pixels in the shadow, and provides a grainier (sic) result in output.

The addition of spread, as explained by Michael Stoddart, permits “real” outer glows to be created in InDesign CS2. (note: to create an outer glow: use [Paper], change the x and y offsets to 0 (zero), and the Blend mode to Normal.

Saving Back as InDesign CS

The InDesign Interchange (.inx) format when using File>Export, permits saving back in a format that can be read by InDesign CS (version 3.0).

To read this interchange format, users of InDesign CS will need to update to 3.0.1 April 2005 (CS2 Compatibility Update).

As the InDesign CS2 Readme and Help states: “Be aware that content created using functionality that is specific to InDesign CS2 might be modified or omitted when you open the file in InDesign CS. For example, footnotes and object styles (new features in InDesign CS2) drop out. However, object style attributes applied to page objects are preserved when possible.”

Therefore, from a Pre-press file handover perspective, PDF is still the recommended format. The PDF will hold all elements in the correct position as per the InDesign CS2 document.

The interchange format is to permit editing by someone who has not yet upgraded from InDesign CS to InDesign CS2 edit documents.

Placing layered Photoshop and PDF into InDesign CS2

Layers, a mechanism for separating objects in Photoshop have been a fundamental part of its makeup for over 10 years. Added in Acrobat 6.0/PDF 1.5, layer support is actually a mechanism for grouping objects. Calling them layers makes it a simple leap of understanding.

In InDesign CS, along with support for Acrobat 6.0/PDF 1.5 layer output matching the layers in the InDesign document.

InDesign CS2 has the ability to dynamically turn on/off layers from Photoshop and PDF files on placing:

In this simple Photoshop file example, there are two layers added to the top of the original image from the following Photoshop file:

There is a one-to-one mapping of layers (and Layer Sets) from the Photoshop file to the placed file in InDesign CS2. In this example, the layer named “correct colour” is a Levels Adjustment layer. The “correct sign” layer is a layer-masked colour correction of the sign.

At placement time, any of these layers can be toggled on/off.

In a Prepress environment, there could be multiple Adjustment layers correcting an image that can be turned on/off at a later stage. Rather than bouncing back-and-forth between Photoshop and InDesign to fix/correct colour – the multiple versions and corrections can be created once in multiple layers. When working in InDesign CS2, the layers can be turned on/off dynamically:

Multiple Page PDF Place

Related to layered file placement, InDesign CS2 also has the ability to place multiple page PDFs.

In the above dialog, the selected PDF has two pages. Only the previewed page on the left can be placed, or all/page range can be placed into the InDesign CS2 document.

After selecting “All” Pages, the “placement gun” is loaded with the first page. After placing this page, the gun remains loaded with the second page … and so forth.

Taking a multple page PDF and placing it back into InDesign for placement/work is easier with InDesign CS2.

CID font encoding

As discussed in InDesign Prepress: Export or Distill PDFs?, there has been a undercurrent of “exported PDFs are bad” form InDesign since version 1.0. The base reason of this has been the method of encoding fonts in the PDF files generated.

CID (Identity-H) encoding is a long supported mechanism of encoding Roman and non-Roman fonts in Postscript, and subsequently PDF. Adobe PostScript Level 2 RIPs and later fully support CID font encoding. Older and some non-Adobe RIPs have difficulty with CID font encoding.

In the above example, the OpenType Pro font Bickham Script Pro with OpenType contextual alternates turned on. The Preflight profile to the right is from Acrobat Professional 7.0 that errors on CID font encoding. This PDF does not have CID fonts. Another file created with some of the included Chinese and Japanese fonts did, expectantly, produce a PDF where the fonts are CID encoded.

This change will promote the use of Direct PDF export from InDesign CS2, especially in workflows where there is a “blind handover”, and the sender does not know the levels of RIPs used at the output end.

Shared PDF styles with Acrobat Distiller 7.0

Acrobat Distiller takes Postscript output from any application and converts this to PDF. It is the oldest and most ingenious part of the Acrobat family.

A constant request from the beginning of InDesign has been to “synchronise” the settings files between the Distiller and InDesign. Whilst each application has a different approach to making PDFs, the settings required to get to the PDF (DPI of images, font embedding requests, etc) can be standardised.

With InDesign CS2, you can open a .joboptions file from within the application; and this setting is “added” to the PDF export settings available. Also, this setting is loaded into other applications of the Creative Suite 2; including the Distiller.

Distiller 7.0 also adds the ability to force conversion of non-CMYK images into a nominated CMYK colour space. This is a major advance in the Distiller (and a long requested feature!). InDesign since version 1.0 has converted RGB elements into the output colours space (usually CMYK) — a handy catch-all for problems with placed elements.

Why use the Distiller with InDesign CS2? There are some additional controls that are highly useful in Distiller 7.0:

Under the Image settings, there is a button “Policy”. This permits a greater degree of control over the policy when the bitmaps do not meet the target resolution. It is similar to the Font embedding policies when fonts cannot be embedded into the resulting PDF.

Booklet Imposition

ALAP InBooklet SE, originally included in the PageMaker Plugin Pack for InDesign CS, is included with InDesign CS2.

Permitting 2-up Saddle Stitch, 2-up Perfect Bound, 2-up; 3-up; 4-up Consecutive.

Summary

Distiller 7.0 and InDesign CS2 add the finishing touches to trouble-free PDF, for print, workflows.

Combined into the Creative Suite 2, the collective features are heading toward Prepress perfection.