I work for a newspaper. We had preflighted a PDF ad submitted by a client. The file appeared fine. However, once we placed the file on the InDesign page and made a PDF of the file to send to the press, the logo in the ad "morphed." It appeared drastically stretched and the colors were inversed.
I've tried replicating the issue to no avail. So, I'm having a difficult time explaining how it happened and instilling any confidence that it won't happen again.That of course is no consolation for my boss or the client.
I've asked some folks about it. They have said it's probably because the page PDF contained CID fonts. But, looking at most of our page PDF files, that happens a lot and we haven't had issues like this in the past.
Others have said that it's because we export to PDF directly from InDesign, rather than printing a postscript and distilling. However, that's how we've been advised by our press and we've been doing this for more than a year without any issues.
Does anyone have any idea how this kind of thing could have happened?
Best guess is that there's something wrong with the contents of the file in question. No reason whatsoever to print to postscript and then run the file through Distiller instead of exporting directly from InDesign -- the engine and the conversion settings are the same.
Can you print the PDF as an image file? Sometimes that will do the trick, which brings me to the idea of something wrong with the file's programming.
Any chance you can get the ad file from the client and build the PDF yourself?
Sorry there's no simple answer.
donna.
A prolific author and writer of many Acrobat books, as well as books on graphic and Web design software.
Donna lives on a lakeshore in central Canada, where all manner of wildlife from muskrats to coyotes come to call.