Expert: Glen Demers - 9/6/2009

Question
Hi, my name is Nabil and I tried both Windows XP and Vista to export to PDF but didn't work out so PLZ HELP!!!!

In my work on the school’s yearbook, I have created the 160 pages that make up the yearbook using Adobe illustrator CS3, so in order to put them in order and page number them according to their sequence, I placed all the pages, which were saved in Illustrator as (Adobe Illustrator Artwork 13.0) with the file extension (.ai), in Adobe InDesign with the correct order. That works just fine.
When it comes to exporting the file that is saved as (InDesign Document (.indd)) to PDF to prepare it for publishing, however, comes some problems. In the process of exporting the InDesign file to PDF with high definition quality for print, the RAM usage of the 2GB RAM shoots up to 90% and then the process of exporting the file fails and shows a message that state: “ Low virtual memory, try to close some windows”. Unfortunately InDesign is the only running program at the time so I have no other programs or windows to close!
What should I do to export my InDesign file to PDF without running out of virtual memory??

N.B. Some of the illustrator pages have sizes that reach to 250 MB.

Thanks

Answer
Hi Nabil,

Your first fix would be to increase the size of virtual memory, you'll have to consult your system documentation to do this, as I am not a Windows user.
The second thing to try is to change the parameters for making pdf's, try the PDF x/1-a setting which will flatten transparency and make for smaller files. You could also try reducing the size of images used in your files under the compression settings. For more information on creating pdf's for print and joboptions, please follow this link; http://is.gd/2YSxr If you are placing .AI files they should not contain embedded images - the images can be placed right in InDesign.

Hope this helps,
Glen Demers
Prepress Technician, Best Printing Online
www.bestprintingonline.com

For more InDesign tips please visit our help pages here: http://www.bestprintingonline.com/indesign.htm