Adobe InDesign Printing Tips
This page contains tips for using the colour management features of Adobe Indesign. We will cover the process of printing direct to an inkjet printer.
Important: InDesign CS3
It appears that the printing pipeline for InDesign CS3 is slightly different to CS2 and there have been many reports of images printing darker from InDesin CS3 than the same image printed from Photoshop CS3, but only when printing directly to a RGB printer such as an inkjet. Because this is typically what we do, this is a real concern.
Here is a thread on the Adobe site that discusses the problem:
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?14@@.3bc4a132/46
If you follow the procedure set out below and printed to an Epson 7800 onto Premium Lustre using the same rendering intent and profile from ID CS3 and PS CS3, you would reasonably expect to get the same result. You will however get a darker print from InDesign.
Several solutions to this have been proposed.
- Make a specific set of profiles for printing just from InDesign
- Export to PDF and print from Acrobat (but not version 8 as it does the same thing as Indesign).
- Export the layout to the Indesign exchange formt, bring it into InDesign CS2 and print from there.
- Print using a RIP to by pass the Adobe print engine
All of these options are a either annoying or expensive. Hopefully there will be a fix for this soon but don't hold your breath.
If you print from InDesign CS3 directly to an inkjet on a regular basis and only use one or two papers. Consider making an InDesign specific profile. For instructions on how to do this, click here.
Colour Management Settings
InDesign shares many of the same colour management settings as Photoshop. For the most consistent colour results use Adobe Bridge to syncronise your colour settings across all your Adobe applications. See the Colour Management Tips page to see how to do this. The colour settings can be found under the Edit menu.
InDesign uses two working spaces, one RGB and one CMYK. These spaces describe the colour space of any elements that are drawn or created in InDesign such as fonts, text boxes, graphical elements... Depending on which colour model you use in InDesign to define the colour of the object, that colour will be defined in one of these two spaces.
Any graphics that are placed into InDesign such as photos or illustrations will preserve the profile that is embeded in the image. If there is no profile embeded in the image then InDesign will assume that an RGB element is Adobe RGB and a cmyk element is ISO Coated FOGRA27.
Printing
To print from InDesign choose Print from the File menu.
In the General tab we can choose how many copies to print, page range, spreads, etc..
In Setup choose the positions and scale of your print.
In Marks and Bleeds choose which, if any marks you wish to apply to the page. Make sure the page size you are going to print on is large enough to contain the image and the marks.
In Output we choose Composite RGB as we are printing to an inkjet printer (an RGB device).
In Graphics select Images Send Data: All. This will pass the full resolution images to the printer. This is best if you are printing the final image on your inkjet printer and you have optimised your images for that process.
In Colour Management choose Print Document. This tells InDesign that we are printing to the final device, in this case an Epson 7800. Under Options choose Let Indesign Determine Colors. Choose the Printer Profile you are going to print to, in this cas Epson Premium Lustre 260.
Click on Page Setup to choose the printer, page size and media type (roll or sheet).
Click on Printer to select the printer driver settings that you wish to print with. It is important here to select the same settings here that the printer profile was made under.
Click Print. Your document will be processed and sent to the printer.
Soft Proofing in InDesign
It is possible to do a soft proof of your final printed document using the Proof Setup>Custom options under the View menu.
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Under Device to Simulate choose the printer profile of the process you wish to soft proof.
Simulate paper white will give you the best possible simulation of the final colours of your print and the saturation you are likely to get. It will simulate the colour of the white of the paper and the density of the black ink.
To hide the white parts of the user interface which can make the white in the proof look dull, choose View>Screen Mode>Preview
This will surround the page with a grey background. If you press Tab to hide the palets and user interface and turn off the rullers if they are on then there should nothing to distract from the preview.