Expert: Amy - 6/28/2005

Question
Dear Amy,


My Illustrator graphics & text look great while in Illustrator. The edges are perfect and smooth. But when I import them into InDesign, they look rough and blocky…

Can you help me with this problem?

Thanks so much for your time.

Sincerely,

_PHIL


Answer
Hi Phil

The problem here isn't really the graphics, it's just the display mode of InDesign. This can be modified.

Nonetheless, even though what you see on the screen is muddy, when you print your document, it should print fine.

If you are using a PC, you can right click the image and go to Screen Performance? and change the display settings to High. The other way to do this is to go to Display Performance under the View menu... and change it to high there.

Knowing this, you might choose to keep the display performance set to low because the screen redraws faster when you zoom or move around. The larger the embedded file, the longer the draw time.

A few other notes about imported images... I think the consensus is that the best format for your imported AI graphics is EPS, so keep that in mind. Lots of folks are trained to link versus Embed, so also keep that in mind.

Hope this helps you!
Amy Pace