Chapter 32: Creating Output Files
In this electronic age, there are many reasons not to print a document, at least not directly. You may want to deliver the document to readers in electronic format, such as in HTML or Adobe Acrobat. Or you may want to generate a file that your service bureau can output for you at an imagesetter ‚ a file that you may send over a network, through the Internet, on a high-capacity disk, or even as an electronic-mail attachment to a device that could be down the hall or in another state.
Selecting the Best Output Option
InDesign has several options for creating output files: You can export to two variants of the PostScript printing language: Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) or Encapsulated PostScript (EPS). You can print to file using all the settings described in Chapter 31 but save to a file ‚ either in EPS or plain PostScript format ‚ rather than output directly to a printer, creating a file tuned specifically to the printer driver chosen .
| New Feature ‚ | InDesign CS no longer supports export to HTML, the language of the Web. You can no longer use InDesign to create documents intended for Web distribution. However, you can create PDF documents that can be opened as a link from a Web document. |
The option you pick has several advantages and consequences; let's look at each choice separately.
Exporting to PDF
This option creates a file that can be linked to from a Web page, whether on the Internet or on a corporate intranet. It can also be accessed from a CD or other disk medium, as long as the recipient has the free Adobe Acrobat Reader program (available for download from www.adobe.com/acrobat ). Finally, a PDF file can be used by a commercial printer or service bureau as the master file from which to print your documents.
This file can include some or all of the fonts, or expect the ultimate output device to have them. You also have control over the resolution of the graphics, letting you, for example, create a high-resolution file for output on an imagesetter or a low-resolution version for display on the Web.
The PDF file won't have information on the specific printer, so a service bureau or printing department could use it on any available output devices. But not all service bureaus and printing departments are geared to print from PDF files; while this is an increasingly popular option, it is by no means ubiquitous. To print a PDF file directly, the output device must be a PostScript 3 device; otherwise , the service bureau must print the PDF file from Adobe Acrobat or use a PDF-oriented workflow publishing system such as those offered by Creo (go to www.creo.com for more information on this product).
Exporting to EPS
This option creates a file that can be sent to many output devices or edited by a PostScript-savvy graphics program like Illustrator, FreeHand, or CorelDraw. With InDesign, you can add a margin for bleeds ‚ but you can't include printer's marks.
Most service bureaus can print directly from EPS files. But note that each page or spread in your document is sent to a separate file, so a service bureau may prefer a prepress-oriented PostScript file or a PDF file that combines all pages into one file ‚ which simplifies their output effort.
The lack of printer's marks might also bother your commercial printer, since they need them to properly combine film negatives . Using a system such as Creo's, the service bureau can add printer's marks and integrate high-resolution and color -corrected images ‚ so EPS could remain a solid output option depending on your service bureau's capabilities.
| Tip ‚ | Exported PDF or EPS files can be imported back into InDesign (or other programs, including QuarkXPress, PageMaker, FreeHand, Illustrator, CorelDraw, Photoshop, and Photo-Paint) as a graphic. This is handy if you want, for example, to run a small version of the cover on your contents page to give the artist credit, or if you want to show a page from a previous issue in a letters section where readers are commenting on a story. If you're creating PDF files, be sure in these cases just to export the page or spread you want to use ‚ even though only one page or spread will display when imported into a page-layout program, the file will contain the data for all other pages, possibly and unnecessarily making its size unwieldy. (When exporting to EPS, a separate file is created for each page or spread, so this is not an issue.) |
Exporting to PostScript prepress
If you know exactly what device your service bureau will use to output your document, and you know all the settings, you can create a PostScript prepress file. All your printer settings are embedded, making the file printable reliably only by the target printer.
| Note ‚ | Remember to work with your service bureau, commercial printer, or printing department ‚ whoever will get the output file ‚ to understand what their needs and expectations are. Although some output files are fully or partially editable, it's usually not easy to know what might be incorrect in a document until the expensive step of actually printing pages or negatives. |
Layout artists may work on single pages or spreads , but printing presses rarely do. Sure, for short-run jobs, your printer may actually work with one page at a time, but typically, they work with forms.
Forms are groups of pages aligned so that when they are folded, cut, and trimmed , they end up in proper numerical sequence. This arrangement of pages on a form is called imposition.
One popular printing method takes a huge sheet of anywhere from 4 to 64 pages, folds them, cuts them, and trims them. This results in a stack of pages in the right order ‚ a process known as perfect binding ‚ the technique used for square- backed publications like books, many magazines, and many catalogs.
The other popular printing method also uses forms, but aligned in a different way. Here, the form is broken into two-page spreads that are cut and trimmed, then stacked separately. A page from each stack is added to a pile, and the pile is then folded to create the right page sequence ‚ this is called a booklet. These folded spreads are stapled in the center, in a process known as saddle -stitching. Many magazines and catalogs use this approach.
Both approaches usually use large sheets of paper, called a web, which is why such commercial printing is known as SWOP, or standard web offset printing. ( Offset refers to the way the ink is delivered to the page, with the ink offset to an intermediate roller between the color plate and the paper. This ensures that just the right amount of ink is placed on each sheet, sort of how an ink stamp works.)
Understanding how forms are configured will show why what InDesign calls a reader's spread ‚ the two adjacent pages that a reader sees when reading (and that a layout artist sees when designing on-screen) ‚ is usually not how you want to output pages for use at a commercial printer. Printing reader's spreads makes more sense if you are, for example, wanting to show a client a mockup of the document, so you print spreads together on large paper (such as printing two 8 ‚ ½-by-11-inch pages on an 11-by-17-inch sheet of paper).
The figure shows how a perfect-bound publication form is numbered, as well as a saddle-stitched form. Note that a form can have a number of pages other than 16 but must be in multiples of 4 pages.
To figure out the page sequence for a perfect-bound form, take a sheet of paper, and fold it as often as needed to create the number of pages on the form. You now have a booklet. Number the pages (front and back) with a pencil, then unfold the paper to see how the form is put together. The front sides are one form, and the back sides another.
To figure out the page sequence for a saddle-stitched form, you can take a sheet of paper for each spread, stack them, fold them once, and then number the pages (front and back) with a pencil, then separate the sheets to see how the form is put together. The front sides are one form, and the back sides another. Another way to do it is to realize that the bottom sheet contains page 1 and the final page on the back, and page 2 and the next -to-final page on the front. The sheet on top would have pages 3 and FP ‚ 2 (where FP is the final page number) on the back and pages 4 and FP ‚ 3 on the back, and so on until the middle sheet.
