Colour WAY OFF — Making PDF's from InDesign

[._Bartay@adobeforums.com]

CS3 — Acrobat 8.1.2 / InDesign 5.0.2 / Photoshop 10.0.1 / OS 10.4.11

The entire suite is synced (through Bridge) all profiles match (North American Prepress 2). The PDF, made from InDesign is so far off in colour.

This happens all the time, but this particular time I've made a duotone – multichannel DCS file in Photoshop. Taken it into InDesign with the two PMS colours. Everything so far looks great and uniform across softwares. Then I make a pdf from within InDesign . . . . the colour radically changes.

I've tried untagging, changing colour settings, nothing seems to get the PDF to come close to the InDesign/Photoshop/Illustrator colours. Any Ideas?

Thanks in Advance, Bartay

[graffiti]

Have you tried printing to the PDF printer?

[._Bartay@adobeforums.com]

Yes I printed to the PDF inside of the Mac OS

It was different but way off too! Mac's PDF isn't very good, in my experience.

[Steve_Werner@adobeforums.com]

Then I make a pdf from within InDesign . . . . the colour radically changes.




Which PDF Preset did you use?

[._Bartay@adobeforums.com]

I was using 'Standard' — So I also tried 'High Quality Print' and it turned out identically to the 'standard' pdf. Off colour! The colour shows up identically in InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator (when saving as eps) — it just radically changes in Acrobat when making a PDF.

It's been difficult sending PDF proofs off when they do not look like the piece!

[Michael Kazlow]

Neither Standard nor High Quality Print use a color management workflow.

Mike

[._Bartay@adobeforums.com]

Mike, So which one does use the Suite work flow?

[._Bartay@adobeforums.com]

I tried printing using: Default / High Quality Print / Press Quality / Standard / PDFX4 2007 / and PDF/X-3:2002

All are off colour and different than the rest of the suite. Albeit, they are constant in their off colour

[._Bartay@adobeforums.com]

Does anyone have another idea?

It would be gratefully appreciated to have the Suite really work together as a suite. Thx— b

[Steve_Werner@adobeforums.com]

Since you haven't really described your workflow, I'm going to have to guess that you're creating PostScript or EPS from InDesign, then processing through Distiller. I think this is losing the color management information.

Try choosing File > Export > Adobe PDF, then choose a PDF preset like PDF/X-3 or High Quality Print which doesn't change color spaces and which supports color management.

[._Bartay@adobeforums.com]

Steve, allow me to thank you! I've been making PDF's in InDesign by going to the print dialogue and choosing Adobe PDF 8 as my printer. I went to 'Export' and found by choosing X-3, it allowed me to set the colour space at it's destination. Gee, it looks just like InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and the PMS book. Now the colour workflow really does work. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[Steve_Werner@adobeforums.com]

Great. Glad to be of help!

[patricia_robinett@adobeforums.com]

was doing that -- exporting my indd file to pdf via 'press quality'. turns blacks to browns... today. this file might have been created with CS instead of CS3. could that be a problem?

have NO CLUE how to use bridge.

thanks.

[Steve_Werner@adobeforums.com]

Patricia,

You're judging this based on how it looks on screen? On your printer? Can you tell more about what you're trying to do? Are we talking about blacks in text? In images? What?

Bridge > Edit > Creative Suite Color Settings should choose color settings for all applications in CS3.

[patricia_robinett@adobeforums.com]

black background is brown when exported to pdf and also when viewed as 'proof'.

never encountered this before.

a graphic imported from an eps doc also has lost black for brown.

could understand a little tweaking of other colors, but black?

and there does seem to be tweaking of other colors.
i'm not happy with this. i've been wondering why things changed from
'what you see is what you get' to 'good luck, charlie'.

what's up with my formerly accurate system? i was inspired to fiddle with the color settings on my fairly new (december 2007) mac but it didn't seem to help. ?!?!?!?

[patricia_robinett@adobeforums.com]

oh -- last week i took several cover files to kinkos and they were quite different than on screen too... when last winter & spring the printed colors were always very true to the screen.

now that is annoying and inconvenient, not to speak of expensive, but all the way from black to army brown? -- that is totally bizarre. did this happen due to the last 'upgrade'?

[Steve_Werner@adobeforums.com]

Can you post a file for us to look at? It's hard to diagnose that kind of issue purely with a verbal description.

[patricia_robinett@adobeforums.com]

where should i post it?

[Steve_Werner@adobeforums.com]

You'll need to find a web-accessible space. The public folder on your iDisk? An FTP site you use? A web site you use? We're all just volunteers here, and it's up to you.

[graffiti]

If you don't have your own web space, here's a list of sites that let you use their space for your files.

<http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3bbd96ba/1>