Washed out PDF’s From inDesign CS3

[Mike Gondek]

Which PDF preset or settings are you using to make your PDF?

In InDesign what do you have under edit >> color settings

[Amanda Queen]

I’m having the same problem. These are my color settings:

Settings: North America General Purpose 2

Working Spaces
RGB: sRGB IEC61966-2.1
CMYK: U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2

Color Management Policies
RGB: Preserve Embedded Profiles
CMYK: Preserve Numbers (Ignore Linked Profiles)

Conversion Options
Engine: Adobe ACE
Intent: Relative Colorimetric

Did anyone find a solution?

[Mike Gondek]

OK u have the standard color settings so that is good. Check what you have set in photoshop.

Try looking at you placed images. Resave one of them in another file format (Eg: psd or eps) and change them to CMYK or RGB and see what happens.

Also does this happen for every pdf setting (eg: smallest file size, High quality print).

Try making a sample dummy document in InDesign and place only 1 item at a time, to help you narrow down the culprit (eg: draw a filled color box, place an image, set some type)

[Amanda Queen]

My Photoshop color settings are the same. It was not washed out when I exported at the “smallest file size” preset.

I tested every variable I can think of, and it appears that the washed out effect only happens when there is something in the document with a drop shadow or an opacity other than 100%.

Is this a problem in how I’m putting the document together? It’s like an effect applied to one object is affecting the whole document. I still don’t know why the pdf output looks so different from my original file.

I tried rebuilding the document piece by piece with different file types. The pdf would look fine until I added a piece with a drop shadow or changed the opacity of an object.

Is there any explanation for this?

[Amanda Queen]

I was just exporting a pdf with the “smallest file size” preset, and I got this message:

“The document’s transparency blend space doesn’t match the destination color space specified in the Export Adobe PDF settings. To avoid color appearance changes in the PDF, click Cancel and change either the document’s transparency blend space, or the destination color space. Or click OK to continue with the current settings.”

This prompted me experiment with the output color settings in the export dialog box. I set color conversion to “convert to destination” and the destination to “sRGB IEC61966-2.1” and the pdf looked perfect.

?

[Mike Gondek]

Thanks for sharing your solution.

On smallest file size: Color conversion should already be set to “convert to destination”, and destination to sRGB.

Not sure why your smallest size preset was different, but glad that your pdfs are coming out correctly now.

[Tadas Stacke]

in one way he was right but this time you should change the trancparency values. When exporting go to advanced and where is trancparency flatener change it to high. This should do the trick