Strange InDesign Problem - .pdf and RGB colourspace

Irish_Tom

Irish_Tom

Irish_Tom

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Joined
18 Oct 2002
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Lo all,

I'm having a bit of trouble with a .pdf and InDesign CS2. I've created a document in InDesign at A1 scale. I'm also making an A4 book for the same project. Instead of having to re-size all of the data in the A1 document to the A4 scale I thought I would publish it as a .pdf and import it back in to the A4 book.

All of the colours on the A1 document are CMYK, I save it as an X1a .pdf and import it into the book document. I've made the background of the page within the book document the same CMYK value as I used on the A1 document. However, when I proof check the colours there is a noticeable difference between the .pdf and the background. When I use the colour dropper on the .pdf it gives me an RGB value which is outside the CMYK gamut, even though the original InDesign file was produced in CMYK.

I can only assume that by converting the A1 document to .pdf I've some how given it RGB colour attributes rather than CMYK but I thought the whole point of X1a standard was that it was print ready.

Anyone got any ideas what to do other than re-scale the A1 document to A4. I'm really not looking forward to that idea because I would rather not have to re-adjust the type settings.

Cheers

Panzer
 
No one familiar with Indesign?

This is supposed to be going off to print today and I'd rather not have a phone call from the client saying that the colours don't match. They look all right on my desktop inkjet but that's no guarantee that it's going to OK on a proper printer.

Help me OCUK-Kenobi you're my only hope.

Panzer
 
Rather than import the pdf into Indesign, what about opening the pdf into photoshop and create a tif file from there?

Just export as a pdf (prob best to use adobe 4 1.3 to flatten any transparencies) with no colour change settings - hi-res obviously.

Check your colour settings in photoshop to make sure they're as close as possible.

Import the pdf into photoshop as A4 plus bleed and as cmyk (don't open as rgb then convert to cmyk).

Warning though - exporting text from indesign as a pdf and saving as a tif from photoshop will result in some lossy text if you then convert the final indesign back to a compressed format again e.g. pdf.

You can also check your separations on screen or print them out to see if there are any discrepancies.

If you've got Acrobat Pro (in CS3 anyway) its Advanced > Print Production > Output Preview.

You can print them out from Indesign by selecting separations rather than composite cmyk in the output section of the print dialogue.
 
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I would have saved the original file as an EPS, then loaded it back into Indy.

But, I would have probably just used the scale tool =)

Edit:
Did you try distilling it to Press Quality?
 
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