7 Replies Latest reply: Jun 9, 2010 2:13 PM by lakeside_editor RSS

    PDFs losing quality

    lakeside_editor

      Hello,

       

      Myself and another are working on a weekly newspaper. We are currenty using Adobe InDesign CS4.  However, what we've noticed is that for our headers and for our ads (both of which are placed in .PDF format), is that after we've used them a few times, they will start to lose quality, becoming pixelated and blurry.  We were wondering if there was a stop this, as it is very troublesome to have to replace our ads and headers every single time we're doing lay out work.  We believe that it might be compressing the file in some way, because the regular files, when we save them, are about 1400 kb while the distorted files are less than 500kb.

       

      Any advice that could be given on the matter would be much appreciated. Thanks!

        • 1. Re: PDFs losing quality
          P Spier CommunityMVP

          Please describe in detail how your workflow progresses with these PDFs. A linked file should not change quality when it is placed, but there are a lot of things that could go wrong when you make the PDF of the InDesign document if you use the wrong settings. If the link is shown as missing or modified in ID the PDF will use the lower qulaity screen preview rather than the actual linked file, too.

           

          I'm guessing that this is happening in print as well as on screen?

          • 2. Re: PDFs losing quality
            Jeffrey_Smith Community Member

            If your headers and ads are raster data, then depending on your PDF export settings you could see degradation from the original image. But this would not be a progressive thing, meaning PDF 1 looks bad, export again and PDF 2 looks worse, etc.

            • 3. Re: PDFs losing quality
              lakeside_editor Community Member

              We'll work with it several times and then it will suddenly go bad, but it doesn't seem to get progessively worse.  Often, placing one PDF does seem to corrupt the others on the page.

              • 4. Re: PDFs losing quality
                lakeside_editor Community Member

                Yes, it's happening in print as well.

                 

                Usually, we try to use the same template every week.  We had everything in good, clean shape for the start of this week, relaid the text and when we went to print proofs, the headers were suddenly of bad quality.  Often, when we re/place one PDF on the page, another will go bad so we have to replace every single PDF on the page right before we send it to print in order to guarantee a clean page.

                 

                When we go to export, it does say that there are missing or modified links.

                • 5. Re: PDFs losing quality
                  Daniel Flavin Community Member

                  IF your original headers were pixel based images AND for subsequent moths you were placing a previous months pdf (crazy workflow), than yes, you're continually downsampling the images, assuming you are using the default jpeg compression during export.

                  Original vector images could be converted to pixel data if there is transparency involved during the export - I could be incorrect and several persons may elaborate on this - back to first caveat.

                   

                  What one would expect, but your question seems to dissuade from, is that each subsequent issue should start from a fresh, untouched template with up to date links for the heads and ads.

                   

                  How do you start a new issue, I'll admit to opening previous documents with existing, repeating elements and updating all articles but eventually this source doc will be a failure waiting to happen...code gets left in a document

                  • 6. Re: PDFs losing quality
                    lakeside_editor Community Member

                    The header is brand new though.  We just started using it last week.  It's only been used once before.  The ads have all been redesigned as well.  But this was a problem we were having throughout our first issue.

                    • 7. Re: PDFs losing quality
                      P Spier CommunityMVP

                      What Daniel is saying... but mostly it sounds like you have a links problem. Are the links out on a network somewhere? It sounds like maybe there is a time synch problem and ID is seeing them as modified (or worse, someone has moved or renamed them) so it isn't using the original image, just the preview. What sort of network, if any, is involved?