Indesign can separate a PDF?

[Night]

I receive a document and a pdf is placed, i print a separation in 2 pms and its work... :?: :?:
I do a test, I import another pdf and the new pms appear.. wow great!
I dont like Indesign, but this function is useful!
Anyone know if a pdf include a rgb can be converted to cmyk?
Anyone found a bug with this feature?

thanks
and sorry for my english :wink:

[CitrusZ28]

You should consider yourself lucky that it worked. I have about zero confidence in Indesign to out put files correctly. I recieved an Indesign file the other day that had an embedded Illustrator image that was colored incorrectly(RGB). It was to be used for foil, and was placed on top of a colorized tiff, so it had to overprint and not knockout. So I recieved the file from the client, and I converted it to an eps and replaced it in the Indesign file, lo and behold, it knocked out the background. So I placed it as an Illustrator file, which did'nt knockout the background, but under picture usage, the file was identified as a pdf, not Illustrator, and was CMYK, not a spot color as it should have been. Result: Indesign converted the Illustrator file to pdf and converted the spot color to CMYK on the fly, both incorrect. The work-around was to convert the Illustrator file to black set to overprint, and it worked, but the proof's colors were incorrect, and I spent about 45 minutes messing around with a job that should have taken 5-10 minutes, both inconvienent and incorrect.
Way to go Adobe, please the designers and piss off the service bureaus and printers!

Night,
May Use PitStop pro, a Acrobat PlugIn to convert RGB content inside PDF to CMYK apart from many other useful things.

BTW.. I have highest confidence on InDesign 2.If scan through user guide/help, work sensibly, it is *the* best page layout application.
I find it very friendly for Print Prepress.

[cari]

Hmmm.... somewhere something must somehow not be quite right...

You can place native Illustrator files in InDesign AND retain spot colour information AND you can correctly output InDesign files and PDF files created from InDesign. I working with a number of bureaus here in Perth. And those using for instance the latest version of Preps have no issues at all. Those placing PDFs in older version of QuarkXPress do experience problems...

So why are you experiencing problems? I'm guessing here but here are some reasons I can come up with:

In Illustrator you can work in two different colour modes: CMYK and RGB
Assure that you are working in CMYK mode (when you create a new document you will be asked). If choose RGB, you will certainly see some unexpected colour conversions.
Then use and apply your spot-colour swatches and save the Illustrator file as a native Illustrator file (no need for conversion to EPS). For placement of native .ai files you must enable the "PDF compatible file" option.

In InDesign assure that your "transparency blend space" is set to "Document CMYK".

Place the Illustrator files and you will be able to correctly output colour separations from InDesign.

Hope this helps a bit.

[dimitri]

citrus, i think when you have files which are not done correctly you will have problems in any program.

that is the reason why no one like suplied files from corel draw. in theory and praxis every thing works fine and you have, belive it or not much more posiblities as in illustrator and freehand.

but becouse it is so cheap and don't have a good reputation we get only files from backyard graphicdesigners who don't really know what they doing.

and then you get jobs where you have rgb mixed, funny settings, wrong sizes, trapping and bleed....

cheers dimitri

[CitrusZ28]

Dimitri, I think that you touched on a valid point, many files are not submitted correctly, and therefore become a chore to output. I think that my complaining about Indesigns' functions are a combination of designers' inability to grasp the functions correctly, and too many bells and whistles in the program itself. Indesign will definitely find it's niche, Do you remember the early versions of Quark? It found it's market after trial and error. You are seeing my posts after frustrating files, but I have basically figured out a path to follow to output Indesign, it is more convaluted than I would like, but I do not fear the program, and I am able to finish those files correctly.