Expert: James Fritz - 8/7/2008

Question
QUESTION: Hi,
I've learned in Illustrator to 'create outline' and 'expand' my documents
before trying to print them.

What are the procedures for preparing an Indesign document for printing?  I
have some jpegs from a disk in the document. Are there other factors to
consider when printing photos?

Your help is greatly appreciated.

Heather

ANSWER: Heather,

This is really an open ended question. There are many things to consider when you are going to try and print your document. If you are printing to your desktop printer or a professional offset press it can change your setup.

Basically you will want to be sure that your photos have enough resolution in order to be printed. Also if your pictures are RGB and you are sending your files to the professional printer you may need to convert them to CMYK before you send them, otherwise a color shift may occur.

To be safe, you can always export your document to a PDF and choose the preset PDFX-1A and you should have a decent PDF that can be printed, as long as your images are high enough quality.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Do I need to flatten it? Again, my experience is limited to Illustrator and when I've converted .ai docs to pdf without flattening, they wouldn't print. My res is high and I'll definately check the RGB vs. CMYK, but is there anything else I need to do? For some reaon the word 'overprint' has popped up in my google queries.

Again, thanks.

Heather

Answer
when you create a pdf with the pdfx1-a preset it will be flattened. Some of the other presents will not flatten your file. Talk to your printer and they will tell you if you need to use one preset or the other. If you are just printing this at home, I wouldn't worry about it at all.