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difference between Indesign CS4 pdf and Acrobat pdf

Forum Index > PDF Creation > difference between Indesign CS4 pdf and Acrobat pdf
2009-03-16 12:36:04
eobery
Registered: Nov 21 2006
Posts: 4
Answered

HI,

I am laying out a book for a client and the printer wants the files sent to them as a pdf/x_1a file only generated from Acrobat. They suggested that I create a postscipt file from the original InDesign document and then create a pdf from within Acrobat. I was wondering if someone could tell me the difference of a file exported from InDesign as a pdf/x_1a and one created from a postscipt file from within Acrobat.

I am not doubting there is a difference, I am just curious as to what that is. And why would Adobe make you go through the extra step of exporting a postscript file only to re-import and export that file in Acrobat. None of the other printers I have used have ever asked me to go through that extra step. Is the pdf from InDesign (or Illustrator for that matter) of sub-par quality?

Thanks in advance!

My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro 9.1, Macintosh
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2009-03-16 15:50:02
#1
UVSAR
Expert
Registered: Oct 29 2008
Posts: 1357
In theory if the PDF is /X-1a compliant then that's all the printer should care about - the standard is designed to ensure all the print-related issues are dealt with, BUT you can still have 'good' and 'bad' PDFs depending on the quirks of the printer's RIP software - they may not be able to cope with things that are legal under /X-1a (like a single font subsetted into lots of partial chunks). In the past a lot of the direct-write PDFs from Illustrator, ID etc. carried across bits and bobs which printers didn't like (mostly things implemented pre-CS that the RIP didn't understand, like identity-H font encoding) - and the solution was to bounce through a Postscript file and into Distiller, forcing the quirky stuff out by using the fact Distiller was about as dumb as the RIPs were, and rejected all the jazzy new stuff Indesign was trying to include. It also did (by chance) some of the things the /X-1a standard wanted, like flattening transparency, wiping color profiles, etc.

However the standards-compliant PDFs generated by ID post-CS2 are indistinguishable from the bounced versions, and don't include anything nasty anymore. If they did, they'd fail the standards check when you open them in Acrobat.

Printers, though, are a paranoid bunch; so they'll be insisting on the Postscript bounce long after the last dust-covered copy of Indesign CS has been sold to a museum - and yes, they can tell what you did, since the distilling app is listed in the PDF metadata.
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2009-03-18 12:33:31
#2
eobery
Registered: Nov 21 2006
Posts: 4
Thanks USVAR for answering my question. I contacted the printer to see what there explanation was for requiring the multi-stage PDF creation and this is the response that I received.

"When exporting to PDF from InDesign, this uses a different PDF producer called PDF Library. It’s not the same as Acrobat Distiller, and doesn’t use the same code to create the PDF as Acrobat Distiller. In the past, we have seen PDF Library cause some issues with PDF files at the the rip process. We always recommend and support Acrobat Distiller because it’s proven to create the most stable PDF files for printing."

So, I guess I will jump through their hoops to submit the files in the format they ask for so I don't get any nasty notes from there pre-press team.

Thanks again for your answer. I learned alot from your detailed answer.

Peace,
Eric
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