Expert: InDesign Pro - 10/24/2007

Question
I use InDesign CS3 on a mac for pre-press for screenprinting. I'm getting grey
boxes when i edit files and come back to InDesign. This problem happens
sometimes, not always. Example: I have a sticker sheet set up with 10
different placed images, i notice some color is missing from an image, i Edit
Original, takes me to photoshop, i make my changes, save and come back
and i'm stuck with a grey box that looks like a lo-res preview box. this does
not go away no matter how many times i close/re-open, or re-place the
image. Upon printing, the image comes out as desired but the file still has the
grey box. any ideas?

Answer
Hi Chris, thanks for the question.

This seems to come up a lot, but there's an easy answer. What InDesign is doing is showing you a Gray Out view of the image. This is great if you're working on a 300 page book full of pictures and are at a stage where you're just working on text edits, but not so great when you're currently working on the images. Also, there are two other preview options for imported pictures in InDesign: Proxy (low res) and High Resolution.

Here's how to fix it. Open InDesign but don't open any documents. This will save the preferences for all newly opened documents from now on. Then under InDesign > Preferences > Display Performance, you will see the options for the image previews. At the top, there's the default view that you can choose for all newly imported images and below you choose the properties of the preset views incase you want to change them while the document is open.

Also, you can change the view setting of any image on the fly by right- or Ctrl-clicking on the image and selecting Display Performance and choosing one of the presets.

You might have to work with the settings a bit to see how they fit into your workflow, but this will help your headaches in the meantime.

I also noticed you choose Edit Original so I thought I'd give you the shortcut if you're doing a lot of opening and editing placed images: With either of the Selection Arrows, hold option and double-click on the placed picture to automatically open the link in the external program it's associated with.

Good luck, let me know how it works out.