Create a PDF for print

The PDF format is a powerful and versatile format. Fortunately InDesign CC can output to the PDF format natively and provides a lot of controls in the process.

Let's explore these features a bit further. I'm beginning this video with the PDF Output.indd file already open on my computer. And in order for us to export to the PDF format out of InDesign CC we're going to go to the File menu and we'll choose Export...Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and save this inside of my Chapter 15 folder.

And down here in the Format, you're going to notice that we actually have 2 different choices when it comes to outputting to PDF. We have Adobe PDF (Interactive) and we have Adobe PDF (Print). In this example, we're going to choose Adobe PDF (Print) to generate a PDF file for print output. I'm going to go ahead and click the Save button. And then I'm going to be presented with the Export Adobe PDF dialog box.

Now probably the most important setting you can choose in here is right up here at the top where it says Adobe PDF Preset. Each of these presets defines a certain set of parameters that controls how a PDF is going to be generated out of InDesign CC. So for example, if we simply choose the High Quality Print it's going to reconfigure all of my settings based on the preset that's defined up here. Now you can go to these different categories and we can see that the High Quality Print preset is going to downsample all of our images to 300 pixels per inch, it is going to also control our Color Conversion and it's also going to control how our fonts are embedded, and anything else that's defined in here as well.

Now you can also create your own preset as well, like, let's say for example, when you create your outputs you want to make sure that you include any Hyperlinks in here. Well the minute that you do that the preset has been modified.

Let's say for example, we'll go to the Compression category. Let's say we don't need this high of a resolution, or we wanted it to downsample images that were between 300 and 450 pixels per inch because you can see that right now only images that are above 450 pixels per inch are going to get downsampled.

Let's go ahead and change this to say 350 pixels per inch. That will downsample more of the images in our document. Change this one as well. Now my point with making these changes is that once you've done this you can click on the Save Preset button and save your own PDF preset. For example, I might call this one the LBV PDF Output preset. And when I click OK, you'll see that I now have a new preset that I can use whenever I'm generating a new PDF file.

There are a lot of choices up here. The PDF/X standards are designed for high end print output. The most recent and most current being the PDF/X-4 2008 standard. So notice with the PDF/X-4 2008 standard the Compatibility is set to Acrobat 7 (PDF 1.6). And then you can also see too that we're still keeping our images to 300 pixels per inch or higher.

Now you can modify some of these settings, but to ensure that your PDF is output properly, you want to try to keep it set to the PDF preset that you choose. So I'm going to use the PDF/X-4 2008 standard.

I'll go ahead and click the Export button. And you'll notice right here you'll see the background process.PDF files exported out of InDesign CC can be output in the background. So this is your status and you'll see that in a second it's going to open up inside of Acrobat. So it's nice to know that when exporting a PDF file you don't have to wait for the dialog box to finish that the processing is going to occur in the background.

Now if I fit my document to the window by pressing Command + 0 on Mac or Ctrl + 0 on Windows you can see that by using my Page Navigation up here I can navigate from one page to the next and I can see what my final PDF document looks like.

So with InDesign's CC ability to output to the PDF format with precision control you can be sure that your resulting PDF file will be top-notch.