Keeping text crisp in a PDF export

Hi all, I'm self-taught in InDesign, so forgive me if the question is basic. I created a document and exported it to PDF using the "press quality" setting. When I print from the PDF, it looks like the text has been converted to little dots rather than vector-style. I tried outlining the text and exporting it, but the same thing happened. Can anyone tell me how to make a PDF without loosing the vector-crisp text?
As a side note, I am using a font that won't embed in PDF format. Will outlining the text fix this problem?
I am using InDesign CS3 on a mac.
Thank you in advance for your help!

I'm using the InDesign swatch labelled "black" for all my text. I assume that's as black as it gets - unless I should use "registration" instead. It prints absolutely clear when I print straight out of InDesign. It's only when it goes into PDF format that it prints spotty.
I've now realized that when I open the PDF in photoshop, the text is actually a very dark gray, indicating that it's being converted somewhere along the line, probably in the PDF process.
But I don't see any settings in the PDF process that would account for changing the color of the text.
Just to clarify, I'm using the "Adobe PDF presets" setting straight from InDesign. Is that the best way to do this? I also tried opening Acrobat Distiller directly, but that didn't make any difference in the output, and seemed more awkward to use.
Richard - the output is set to at least 300 dpi under the compression menu. I didn't see any output settings under the other menus.

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Aliased text on PDF export with blending modes

So I've had this issue with a pdf, I tried to export it CMYK, RVB, interactive pdf, regular pdf, with tons of different other options, the text was still very aliased.
I decided to take it back from scratch, openned a new document with the same size, and copied/pasted element after element from the old one to the new one, exporting as pdf between each copy/paste. The first exports went really well, the render was great… until I pasted a vector element that was applied with a blending mode (overlay).
When I switched it to normal, the pdf export was smooth again. Tried every blending mode, everyone makes the text jaggy. Switch back, it's ok. So I'm 100% sure that this comes from blending modes, as opposed to what I could have read on other forums.
This is a request, please, InDesign team, take care of this problem, this is quite annoying in many cases.
Thank you for your attention!
Twitted here as well : https://twitter.com/grinderlabs/status/448381486627311616

To minmize the possibility of rasterizing or outlining text when transparency is flattened, keep the text above any transparent objects. Blending modes, along with most effects, use transparency.
You can also minimize the risk by exporting the PDF with live transparency, which is supported in Acrobat 5 or higher compatibility.

How do I link to Anchor Text from browser to PDF file exported from InDesign?

I see that this question was asked previously but not answered:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/3737541
I need a way to link to topics (from an HTML page) within a structured PDF file generated from InDesign, i.e. one that has an interactive bookmarks
panel, that doesn't break the links when the file is updated.
In particular, I don't want to refer to:
* page numbers because the document will repaginate when it is updated, breaking existing links
* named destinations that are numeric as addition/deletion of topics renumbers the named destinations, breaking the links.
Is there any option in InDesign that creates named destinations derived from bookmark titles as that would seem to solve my problem?
I have a similar need, but I have not been able to find an answer anywhere online, even after a several hours of research.
I am on contract with General Electric to develop a UI Style Guide for an international team of developers. My client wants to be able to distribute the Style Guide as a PDF document, but needs to provide links to specific topics when submitting a "Story" in an Agile development environment to the programmers.
Ideally, I would like to be able to create "named destinations" in InDesign such that I can provide the client with a list of URLs similar to this format:
file:\\StyleGuide\Test1-20131024a.pdf\#nameddest=AnchorText-01
However, I can not figure out how to create "named destinations" in the PDF file from the InDesign file in which I have created the Anchor Text in the Hyperlinks tab.
Alternately, the client would be satisfied with the ability to link to specific bookmarks in the exported PDF file that have been derived from the configuration of the Table of Contents styles, but my research has led me to believe that it is not possible to hyperlink from a browser window to a bookmark in a PDF file (only to specific page numbers, search word lists, named destinations, and comments) as described here: http://blogs.adobe.com/tcs/2011/01/tcs-specific/linking-to-a-page-within-a-pdf-and-more.ht ml
Having been using InDesign since 1988, when it was PageMaker, I would prefer to use it to provide GE with the most attractive deliverable, but they are now leaning heavily toward having me licensed with Madcap Flare, which has this capability built in:
http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare9/Default.htm#Nav_Links/Named_Destinations/Creating _Named_Destinations.htm
Please help me to find a solution that will allow me to continue using InDesign for this project.
Thank you!
Lynne O’Connor
Technical Writer (contractor)
GE Oil & Gas - Measurement & Control

Follow-up post (solution is not available):
I have just completed a phone call with Gaurev Sethi of Adobe escalated technical support in which I shared my screen to explain and demonstrate the desire to link from an external URL to a specific location within a PDF file that has been exported from InDesign. After 40 minutes, during which I was placed on hold a few times while he consulted with his team, it was determined that the desired functionality is not supported in InDesign and has been identified as a limitation of the software.
In researching alternate documentation software that supports PDF export, I discovered that Madcap Software supports this functionality in its Flare product:
http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare9/Default.htm#Nav_Links/Named_Destinations/Creating _Named_Destinations.htm
Note that linking via URL to a bookmarked location within a PDF is not supported:
http://blogs.adobe.com/tcs/2011/01/tcs-specific/linking-to-a-page-within-a-pdf-and-more.ht ml
More about parameters that can be specified to open PDF files are available here:
http://www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/acrobat/pdfs/pdf_open_parameters.pdf
Although the above link is for a previous version of Acrobat, I could find no evidence to the contrary in the current SDK documentation.
-Lynne

White text appears black/grey after export to PDF - but only on a PC!

I use Pages to make flyers in A4-format. But 8 out of 10 times I make one, convert it to PDF and send it to my boss via Mail, I get a reply where he says that everything looks good but the text.
I have a colored background or image with white text on top in its own layer.
This problem has been tauting me for several weeks now, and I thought I had the soloution recently when I started to make sure that the text layer where brought to the front (top layer). But still i get the message back that the text is either black or dark grey and can´t be read on his PC. It looks fine on my Mac, but not on his XP/Vista computer.
- I usually convert using the "Better" compression mode.
- I tried to convert it using Print - Print to PDF but the problem persists.
- I have deleted the plist-file as well. Same problem.
But since this doesnt happen with all my flyers, I am beginning to think that there is something I am doing "wrong" while making the flyer or that there is some kind of "rule" that I dont know about. Or is it an unstable PDF-export algorithm?
Can anybody help me please?
Message was edited by: Rayden78

I use Pages to make flyers in A4-format. But 8 out of 10 times I make one, convert it to PDF and send it to my boss via Mail, I get a reply where he says that everything looks good but the text.
I have a colored background or image with white text on top in its own layer.
This problem has been tauting me for several weeks now, and I thought I had the soloution recently when I started to make sure that the text layer where brought to the front (top layer). But still i get the message back that the text is either black or dark grey and can´t be read on his PC. It looks fine on my Mac, but not on his XP/Vista computer.
- I usually convert using the "Better" compression mode.
- I tried to convert it using Print - Print to PDF but the problem persists.
- I have deleted the plist-file as well. Same problem.
But since this doesnt happen with all my flyers, I am beginning to think that there is something I am doing "wrong" while making the flyer or that there is some kind of "rule" that I dont know about. Or is it an unstable PDF-export algorithm?
Can anybody help me please?
Message was edited by: Rayden78

Text shifting on imposed PDF; distill vs export

Hi experts. Please help me solve a mystery!
Mac OS 10.7, InDesign CS5 7.0.4
Here's the problem: I export a PDF (using modified version of the built-in X-1a PDF export preset to include bleed and crop marks)
Fonts are embedded, no problems when preflighting in Acrobat.
The printer imposes the file by placing my PDF into spreads in InDesign CS6 on Mac (OS unknown) and exports to PDF using unknown settings (The PDF producer is Adobe PDF Library 10.0.1).
The imposed PDF I get back from the printer has text shifting (the PDF i send to him looks fine--no gaps).
It looks like there are random blank spaces in the text and misaligned numbered lists. (left image, image on right shows original ID file)
Our production person insists that my exporting the PDF is to blame and says we must use distiller for sending files to the printer.
When I print to postscript then distill, the shifting does not occur in the imposed PDF i get back from the printer.
Everything I have read on here for years has said the postscript/distill route is bad/old/unnecessary/proof I should get a new printer.
Production claims fonts are not properly embedded when exporting PDF (patently false as the document info show that fonts are embedded).
Unless I can explain, and fix the shifting type problem, I will have to stick with postscript/distilling workflow.
(Although this is also not a guarantee--i have had the text shift/gap happen in PDFs that went through distiller. There the problem seemed to be a bullet glyph that was CID-H encoded.
When I switched the font from a TT to PS version of the font, it used different encoding and the shifting/gap was fixed in the PDF i got back from the printer.)
Please share your thoughts!
Thanks.

OK. I've gotten the original PDF files that were exported from CS5 and then placed into a new CS6 document and then exported from the OP. By the way, the problem is not limited to exported PDF, but also with PDF created by distillation of PostScript from CS5.
I cannot replicate the problem by simply creating a new InDesign CS6 document and placing pages into the new document and exporting.
However, I noted that some crop marks in the original CS5-exported PDF file were not in the CS6-exported file. That leads me to believe that something edited the CS6-exported PDF file. Furthermore, the CS6-exported PDF file was not only labelled as PDF/X-1a, but it also had the Trapped True key on. For exported PDF, InDesign provides no trapping function and absolutely no way of setting that trapping key in the PDF file. But Adobe Illustrator does provide the means of doing trapping and/or labeling a PDF/X file as being trapped with the Trapped True key.
At this point, I believe that some combination of the following events occurred:
*     The CS5 exported PDF file(s) were edited, possibly in Illustrator or with object editing in Acrobat Pro either with native tools or third party plug-ins and then resaved with the resultant PDF file(s) placed in the CS6 document. This editing may have messed up spacing of text that used ligatures, alternate characters, old style figures, etc. even though such text was not directly edited.
*     The CS6 exported imposed spreads were subsequently opened in Illustrator or some other third party trapping engine and resaved with the Trapped True key set. In the process of resaving the file, problems per (1) above occurred.
Conclusions:
(1)     Whether PDF/X-1a or PDF/X-4 was used for export anywhere in this process is irrelevant. The designs in question didn't use any transparency or color management. Furthermore, no CID-encoded fonts were involved and no font name conflicts were involved. However, the fonts used in the original InDesign documents were OpenType CFF fonts with extended character sets which were in fact accessed for ligatures, superscripts, subscripts, etc.
(2)     Previously non-disclosed steps were used in the workflow between the CS5 export and the resultant files I got to see. Using Illustrator as a PDF editor or as trapping software for PDF files in general is a possible / likely cause of the problems. If not Illustrator, then some very defective PDF workflow software for trapping and/or editing was used.
(3)     Although InDesign is not designed as an imposition tool, the fact is that it is used for amalgamation of content such as magazines, journals, etc. where ads and other content as PDF (and other formats) is placed within InDesign pages. This appears to be working correctly and is not the source of the problem.
The OP is dealing with problematic workflow, but not with InDesign problems.
          - Dov

In Preview, when I add text annotations to my PDF (lecture note slides), they look fine until I close it and reopen it, and then they are rotated 90 degrees. How do I fix this and keep it from happening again?

In Preview, when I add text annotations to my PDF (lecture note slides), they look fine until I close it and reopen it, and then they are rotated 90 degrees. How do I fix this and keep it from happening again?

I have the same problem with lectures slides.
Furthermore, sometimes the text box, when doube-clicking, turns the text into a one-liner. Causing the text box to sometimes get 3. times wider than the pdf itself.
tcrother wrote:
... then when it rotates the text isn't visible and I'm stuck clicking on random parts of my lecture slides hoping the text box will come back. ...
By pressing [cmd + I] the Inspector opens up and clicking on the rightmost tab 'Annotations' you should be able find those Annotations again. I do this regularly to find the empty annotations I accidentally create while clicking through slides.

PDF exports look terrible - white lines in text

I have been u sing indesign for years and years all of the sudden my pdf exports look terrible. The images are pixelated and the text has white lines
in it.
I used these pdf previews for my clients and I certainly cant use what Im getting from INDD right now. I have no idea what happened to cuase this.
Wish I could show you but any ideas would be great.
The following text has no formatting on it yet there are pixelated white lines? help?
Thanks in advance.

Wow - thank you for all the responses. Yes it still happened with different fonts, different sizes of font etc... So I looked at my export settings and noticed that it was set to High Quality Print - Modified. I Switched it back to High Quality Print and it appear to have cleaned it up quite a bit.
Thank you all for your speedy responses.

Overprint Text in PDF export

I am using Freehand MX 11.0.2 on Mac Leopard 10.5.2
In a couple of circumstances I noted that black text (100%K),
even when "overprint" is selected at the text's color palette, and
the layout exported as PDF (CMYK), but the black text does not
overprint – at least when I check opening the PDF in
Photoshop, the black text there is spared on the background.
Did others note the same problem or am I just doing something
wrong here...?
Thomas
http://www.zugergrafik.ch
Grafik Design Zug
http://www.ecliptic.ch Graphics
and Illustrations

> In a couple of circumstances I noted that black text
(100%K), even when
> "overprint" is selected at the text's color palette, and
the layout exported
> as PDF (CMYK), but the black text does not overprint
Thomas, you are doing nothing wrong. Freehand's PDF Export
function is not
suitable for professional printing jobs.
See this technote. The last line of the technote refers to
your problem.
http://www.adobe.com/go/tn_13496
Get Adobe Acrobat Pro/Distiller.
From Freehand, print to a Postscript file. In Freehand's
advanced print
settings, ensure that the correct PPD has been selected. Use
either the
'Adobe PDF' PPD or the PPD of the Postscript printer that
will be used to
print the document.
Then use Distiller with 'Press Quality' settings to convert
the Postscript
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PDF export causes text to be pixelated (continued)

Alright, what is going on with Adobe's accounts?
Apparently Adobe doesn't recognize my username and password for this second account, and when I ask to send a password to my email, I never get the email, so I had to create a third account just to post a thread and update it.
And what the hell is going on with my original thread?
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/988287
I can't find a Reply button anywhere to update my question. I just saw it there a few days ago. What happened to that? I can't find for the life of me another way to update my thread! Why is the thread marked (READ ONLY) when my question hasn't been answered yet?
You people have to be kidding me! This is seriously the most confusing, bewildering process I have ever had to go through just to ask a question and update it.
So that's why I'm creating this new thread. Here is a link to the old one:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/988287
Anyways!
Here is the update that I was trying to post for the past week, in that thread, but couldn't:
UPDATE:
I still have not received an answer to my question:
How do I export a vector drawing with text in Photoshop to a PDF, such that the text isn't pixelated when I view the PDF?

Unfortunately I have to use PDF, because I need the file to be infinitely resolved when I zoom in as much as I want (no pixelation).
But then again, why do it in Photoshop in the first place? You are using the most unsuitable tool I can think of to produce guaranteed vector-based output. The standard answer we use in the Illustrator forum a lot is: If it gets rasterized, then there is some appearance that makes the programm think it can only retain the look by converting to pixels. Contrary to what you think, just drawing it out as vectors doesn't guarantee vector output. There is any number of things that could be going on, so unless you tell us more about your setup and what PDF export options you actually use, this is an pretty unproductive discussion, but some of the common caveats are:
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Hi,
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Thanks

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PDF Export Looks Good at 150% Zoom, but Bad on 100%

Hi,
I'm extremely new to InDesign, and am trying to make a colourful resume/portfolio design using ID, but am running into an issue already with exporting via PDF.
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Image (full-size): http://www.starrcadia.com/logo2.png

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I tried a PNG once earlier (when I was still trying to fix the 72 ppi logo), but since it had no improvement, I abandoned the PNG way before (it's a PSD in those screenshots above).
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Keeping text crisp in a PDF export

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