From the course: InDesign 2024 Essential Training

Exporting a PDF - InDesign Tutorial

From the course: InDesign 2024 Essential Training

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Exporting a PDF

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- [Instructor] If you want to send a proof of your file to a client, you'll likely send them a PDF. If you want to send a finished document to a printer, you should probably send them a PDF, so it's crucially important that you be able to create robust PDF documents from InDesign. To make a PDF, just go to the File menu and choose Export. Then from the Format pop-up menu, you need to make a choice between Adobe PDF Interactive or Print. The interactive option should only be used if your document has movies or buttons or something like that. For the vast majority of PDFs, you should choose Adobe PDF Print. Even if you're using hyperlinks and bookmarks, this is the better choice. Now, when you click Save, you'll get a lot of options to choose from, but I recommend that everybody start by choosing one of the Adobe PDF presets up here at the top of the dialog box. For example, if you're sending this PDF to a commercial printing press, you're probably going to want to use one of these PDF/X options. I know all of these sound geeky, but you need to ask your printer, do they want a PDF/X1a or something else? Now, if you're lucky, your printer will come back and say, "You can give us PDF/X-4." X-4 is a great quality, robust PDF. Now, on the other hand, if you don't know who's going to be printing this, like maybe you're sending an ad to a magazine or a newspaper and you have no idea where it will actually be printed, then the safest option is probably PDF/X-1a. Today, we want to make a PDF that's not going to a commercial press, one that we're simply going to be sending for a proof, or maybe we're going to post it on our website for someone to view on screen, and then maybe they're going to print it on their desktop printer. For that kind of PDF, I recommend that you choose high-quality print, but don't stop there. You should still customize it. For example, I almost always change the compatibility pop-up menu to something newer. Next, of course, you could print all of your pages or a range. I'm going to change this to a range just of pages 30 to 31. If you have spreads that you want to end up on the same page, like in the trifold brochure we saw in the last movie, then turn on spreads. But in most cases, like for books or magazines, you do want to leave this set to pages. Because I'm expecting most people to view my PDF on screen, I'll change my viewing settings. I like using Fit Page and the layout set to Single Page. Also, I like it when InDesign opens my PDF after I export it, so I turn this on. Let's look at a couple more options. Create tagged PDF is really important if you're going to post your PDF on a website or you're sending it out for somebody to read on screen. This allows much better web SEO, but it also allows people with visual disabilities to use this PDF with screen reader software. It's far from perfect, but it helps. If you want to learn more about this subject, I recommend the course "Creating Accessible PDFs" by Chad Chelius here in the online training library. Also, if you've made a table of contents or made any hyperlinks or bookmarks, you want to turn those check boxes on down here. Note that these are the only interactive features that are saved in a print PDF. Okay, let's choose Compression in that list on the left. Because this is a PDF that I'm going to be putting on a website, and I'm expecting most people to view it on screen, I want to lower the resolution here. This value of 300 pixels per inch and maximum image quality would be great for a commercial printing job, but here, I'm going to change this to 150 pixels per inch, and the image quality can be medium. This is going to make the PDF file size much smaller when we export it. Okay, let's look over here at the Marks and Bleeds section. Now, if we were sending this to a commercial printing press, I would want to ask them, do you want crop marks? Do you want registration marks and so on? 'Cause these days, many printers don't want those things because they're going to add them to the PDF themselves, but if you can, definitely check with the printer. That said, if you have a document that has objects that bleed off the page, like this document does, and you're sending this PDF to a commercial printing press, then you definitely want to turn on Use Document Bleed Settings. Otherwise, you'll lose your bleed. But in this case, where we're just exporting this for screen or maybe a desktop printer, then you definitely don't want to have these on. You want it to be cropped off right at the edge of the page. Okay, once you're done with choosing all these options, it's time to click Export. But when I click that export button, I want you to look up here at the top of the screen next to that little light bulb icon. You'll see a little animation for a moment, and that animation is the PDF exporting because PDFs actually export in the background, and the only way to know that they're exporting is by watching that little animation, especially on a really big file. All right, there we go. I'll click Export. There it goes, there's the animation. Now it exported the PDF and it opened it in Acrobat. Looks great. Making PDF files isn't difficult at all from InDesign. What is sometimes difficult is making the right decisions for the output you're aiming for.

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