Adobe PDF Preset

[Jay Newman]

I'm designing brochures for our company in ID CS2 and exporting to PDF, which I then send to the printing company to run off on their high-end "NexPress" digital/laser printer.

When I'm in ID and I choose File | Export the dropdown at the top called Presets gives me a few choices, and I'm guessing High Quality Print or Press Quality are the ones I need to choose from.

I notice they're not much different in most categories except the Output category

In the General category, High Quality Print includes Create Tagged PDF.

In the Output category, the settings under Color are dramatically different:

High Quality Print says:
No Color Conversion
Include Tagged Source Profiles

Press Quality says:
Convert [colors] to Destination (Preserve Numbers)
Destination = Document CMYK - U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2
Don't Include Profiles

Which choice is appropriate for my purposes, High Quality Print or Print Quality?

Thanks.

Jay

[S***@adobeforums.com]

I would describe High Quality Print as output intended for a desktop printer. Press quality is definitely what you want for a high-quality print.

[P***@adobeforums.com]

Jay,

With any question like this, you should ASK THE PRINTER! The "NexPress" may be a cmyk device, but if it behaves like a desktop laser and converts cmyk to rgb and back to cmyk, you lose a lot in the translation. They may even have some custom settings they'd like you to save and use.

Peter

[Jay Newman]

Actually, Peter, you're right. I asked them and they emailed me a profile ready to plug right into my Acrobat "Settings" folder as a preset specifically for their NexPress.

(It was a 3K file and when I did Save As to give it a new name it became an 8K file, but I guess that's normal behavior.)

Thanks!

Jay

[Dov Isaacs]

For the record, the NexPress is a high-end digital press, now marketed by Eastman Kodak. It is a CMYK device with support for one spot color. You prepare output for it in the same way you would for any high-end output device, except that its RIP does not require separations.

You should not require any special PDF creation settings to produce PDF that will print well on this device. The "Press Quality" should work quite fine as would the "High Quality Print" built-in settings.

- Dov

[L***@adobeforums.com]

I have a similar problem. I created a book layout to be offset printed. That printer has sent me a file called "PDF Export Presets" for me to use in order to get the settings right when I create the PDF from this InDesign file.

The woman who sent them said they are Mac presets (I use a PC). Although my computer can't seem to guess what application would use this file, it does come with a proper little icon marked "Presets" right on the icon itself.

I looked throughout the InDesign folder on my hard drive, and although I found a folder called "Presets," I don't see any other file icons that look like this one. How do I import/use these presets so I can export this file to PDF properly? Do I just put the file in the proper folder, and if so, what IS that folder?

This printer used to send me a list of how to mark each dialogue box while creating a PDF when I worked with PageMaker a few years ago, but they haven't updated their instructions for InDesign yet. (They're in the midst of switching from Quark to InDesign and are a little behind yet.)

Any help on how to get these presets to work would be greatly appreciated. And, if the Mac thing is a problem, I'd like to know that too so I can go back and gripe at them one more time. ;)

Thanks!

Linda

[P***@adobeforums.com]

Linda,

Here's something you can try. Save the file somewhere convenient on your system.

Open InDesign, click the file menu and select PDF Export presets > define...

In the dialog that opens, select the "load" button and navigate to your file. You may need to change the file type drop-down to "all files" since ID will be looking for a .pdfs extension which is most likely missing from the Mac file.

Choose the file, and when you are back in the dialog, click OK. That should add the preset to the list in ID. I don't think there will be any problem working cross-platform.

Peter

[Jay Newman]

On my computer, an XP PC, I found all the default Preset files (that came in ID or Acrobat or...???) in the following location:

c:\documents and settings\all users\shared documents\adobe pdf\settings

They call have the long extention of *.joboptions.

High Quality Print.joboptions
Press Quality.joboptions
etc
etc

I took the one the printer gave me and dumped it into that folder. When I go to Export a PDF the Presets dropdown shows these files as the list of choices. I'm sure this method of provding a ready-to-go presets list is the new way of doing it, making the old method of giving you a list of things to check off quite obsolete, espeically with the number of screens available now and the quantiy of choices.

Jay

[P***@adobeforums.com]

Jay,

I think that if you check your list carefully, you will find that these joboptions files are used by Distiller. I run Win2K rather than XP, but I think the usage would be the same. I have a number of files that are in this location that DON'T show up in ID, and ID does not load .joboptions files as PDF Export Presets in its own dialog. I also have a number of defined presets in ID that don't show up anywhere else. While I'm not certain of it, I think the ID presets are all stored in the InDesign SavedData file in your user profile. They disappear if you replace your preferences.

On the up side, though, if the file you got from the printer is a .joboptions rather than .pdfs, double clicking it should open it up and allow you to copy down the settings to redefine it in ID.

Linda,

If you tried unsuccessfully to import the file as suggested above, try temporarily adding the .joboptions extension. If it is a .joboptions file, double-clicking it should open a tabbed window with all of the settings.

Peter

[Bob Levine]

Note that for CS2, you can use distiller joboptions for exporting PDFs.
Note that there are still big differences in the way the file will be
created depending on the PDF version.

Bob

[S***@adobeforums.com]

In the CS2 applications all the PDF presets (called Settings in Distiller) are stored in the same folder. I think Peter got the path right for Windows (I work on a Mac). The reason that there are some which show up in Distiller and not in InDesign, is that they're designed to be "cloaked" (for example, you see PDFA DRAFT.joboptions in Distiller but not in IDCS2).

When I go into InDesign and create a new PDF preset (File > Adobe PDF Presets > Define > New), it immediately creates a file in that common location, even before I start setting the info and clicking OK.

If I double-click a "joboptions" file, it's immediately put in that location and opened in Distiller.

So I think there's only one storage location across the Suite.

[P***@adobeforums.com]

Bob,

Is this a change for CS2? I definitely don't have access to my .joboptions files in CS?

Peter

[Bob Levine]

Yes. New feature.

Bob

[P***@adobeforums.com]

Cool! Guess I'll have to pony up the $$ sooner rather than later. I've been waiting for the first set of patches to post, but there doesn't seem to be all that much grief being aired here on the forums.

Peter

[S***@adobeforums.com]

The bugs being reported seem to be very minor. Go for the upgrade!

[Jay Newman]

I do see the folder:

c:\program files\adobe\acrobat 7.0\distillr\setting

and it contains only the following:

High Quality Print.joboptions
Press Quality.joboptions
Smallest File Size.joboptions
Standard.joboptions

When I received the presets files from my printing company, I did a search on one of the names of the presets I saw in ID and found the folder I mentioned earlier (don't recall which name I searched for but it was one that led me to this other folder):

c:\documents and settings\all users\shared documents\adobe pdf\settings

and it contains:

High Quality Print.joboptions
PDFX1a 2001.joboptions
PDFX3 2002.joboptions
Press Quality.joboptions
Smallest File Size.joboptions
Standard.joboptions

When I received the presets file from the printing company, I saved it into that latter folder. I then went into ID, opened a file, went to do an Export of PDF, found that Preset in the dropdown and selected it, and then did Save Preset in order to save it with a new name, and the location it put that newly created file in, with a joboptions extension, was this same latter folder.

Needless to say, when I hit the dropdown in ID for presets when preparing an Export top PDF, I'm seeing the contents of that latter folder. I have no idea if I'm seeing the contents of BOTH folders due to the redundant filenames.

Jay

[P***@adobeforums.com]

As Bob has so kindly pointed out, I'm still stuck in ID3, and the system has changed for ver. 4 (CS2), so what I said wouldn't apply to you, but I think the advice would still be valid for users of IDCS.

Peter

[Jay Newman]

So, just out of curiosity, what IS pulling from which folder? Do I need to maintain the redundant files? What if I would have put that custom profile from the printing company into the Program Files\... folder and gone from there? Would it have still shown up in ID CDS2? And when I opened it in ID and did Save to create a new one with a new name, would it have gone into that same Program Files\... folder or into the Documents and Settings\... folder where I have them now?

When I open Acrobat Distiller 7.0, its main screen's dropdown for Default Settings includes all the presets that are in my Documents and Settings\... folder.

Jay