Design Center Tutorial
Prepare your InDesign files for print production
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Forensic tools
- Info palette
- Preflight and package
- PDF creation methods
- PDF creation settings
Forensic tools
Preview Mode (View > Screen Mode > Preview) simplifies your view of the document, hiding any nonprinting objects such as guides, frame edges, and hidden text characters so that you can concentrate on content. You can toggle the Preview mode among four states: Normal, Preview, Bleed, and Slug. But you can easily toggle between the two most common states, Normal and Preview, just by pressing the W key on your keyboard. In addition to simplifying your view, Preview mode will hide any images or other elements that have been assigned a nonprinting attribute in the Attributes palette (Window > Attributes). If you’ve set an object to nonprinting while you experiment with your design, its disappearance in Preview mode serves as a reminder to fix the attribute or delete the object.
Overprint Preview (View > Overprint Preview) can be used to confirm that you’ve set objects to overprint. But perhaps more importantly, you can use it to catch common problems. For example, white objects set to overprint will disappear during output, and they’ll disappear during Overprint Preview as well. Why is this? With rare exceptions, white in illustration and page layout just signifies “this is blank paper — no ink prints here.” The rare exception would be a literal white ink created for printing on metallic surfaces or clear substrates. What kind of a fiend would set a white object to overprint? Oh, nobody does it intentionally. It’s usually the result of creating a black object, such as a logo, in a drawing program and then setting it to overprint. Subsequently changing the object’s fill to white does not turn off the overprint attribute. Overprint preview also provides a more realistic representation of blending modes applied to spot-color objects. The default view mode in InDesign doesn’t always correctly represent blending modes other than plain old Normal (Figure 1).
Figure 1: It’s impossible to have 200 percent of a single ink without a second printing plate. But if you create two objects with the same 100-percent spot fill, and then apply the Multiply blending mode (top), InDesign’s display implies that the overlapping area will be darker. But turn on Overprint Preview (bottom), and the display tells the true story.
Activating Overprint Preview turns on High Resolution Display, so you may experience slower performance in a graphics-heavy document. When you’re finished using Overprint Preview, turn it off to speed up performance.
Flattener Preview (Window > Output > Flattener Preview) uses red highlighting for text and vector content that may be rasterized during the output process (Figure 2). Notice the word may. During a direct export to PDF, InDesign CS and CS2 perform engineering feats to avoid rasterizing such content. However, when you select File > Print, both versions may be forced to rasterize vectors and text content that interacts with transparency. The Flattener Preview can’t prevent rasterization, but it provides a visual warning. Use it as a guide as you modify stacking order and layering in a file.
Figure 2: The Flattener Preview uses red highlighting (here, represented by black) to indicate potential text and vector rasterization.
The Component Information dialog (Figure 3) provides a peek under the hood of your copy of InDesign, as well as a glimpse of a document’s life story. In Windows, hold down the Control key as you choose About InDesign from the Help menu. On the Macintosh, hold down the Command key and choose About InDesign from the InDesign menu.
Figure 3: The Component Information box provides details about the application itself as well as the currently active open document.
The top part of the dialog shows information about the current version of InDesign (Figure 3 shows version 4.0.2.633) and the active plug-ins. This may be useful if you need help from Adobe tech support, since you’ll need to provide the current version and other environmental information when you call. The bottom part of the dialog displays information about the active InDesign document, including the very useful Document History, which constitutes a personal diary of the document. You’ll see whether the document was converted from QuarkXPress or PageMaker, whether it’s been recovered after a crash, and how many times it’s been saved (including the versions and platforms in effect during the saves). Would you ever be this nosy about a file? Well, if it’s neurotic—crashing frequently or just plain acting strange—take a look at the Document History. If the file has had a traumatic childhood, it may be worth exporting it to InDesign Interchange as a purification ritual. Then, open the Interchange file and make a new start.
