I know this is a color mgt. forum, but I'm just exasperated. My designer has created some pdf portfolios from In Design (which I don't own and have never used) . They are quite blurry and off color. I have taken the same images and run them in PHotoshop and Bridge 4 and the pdfs produced by PS and Bridge looks 10 times shaper and clearer.
Why? This gets complex becuase they are all formatted quite complexly for In Design, and it will take too much time to re-formatt them for Photoshop or Bridge. But she has no idea why they are not coming out sharp and nice with In Design. any ideas. It's not compression. She has been outputting with no compression from In Design and they still look subpar.

It certainly sounds like a compression issue - what makes you sure that it isn't?

There are two factors here - when InDesign makes a PDF, it (1) resamples the images to a specified resolution; and (2) applies jpeg compression to the images, unless you deliberately specify differently. And of course, you have varying quality options for the jpeg compression.

You need to quiz your designer about both (1) and (2) and ask to see her PDF settings. We'll need some more information.

Yes, setting up the output parameters is one of the trickiest things with InDesign, there are a lot of options you need to check.

However its worth spending the time to set this up as you can save custom settings and use it repeatedly once you have set up a high quality set of settings.

Thanks guys, I'll try to get those settings and report back. Any ideas of what setting to put for best, crispist output? I can compress later myself to my taste with PDF Shrink app.

Well, 300ppi/max quality jpeg has never let me down yet.

But if you're really worried about it, you can choose Don't resample/Tiff, I guess ...

Also, I would probably not want to "compress later to taste" unless you know specifically how your 3rd party app handles color management.

My 3rd party app makes near perfect pdfs in all ways. The color is screwed up before I get it. Again, if you guys have optimal settings in In Design, please let me see them

I genuinely think you (or your designer) are over-engineering this. There are some excellent PDF presets that come with InDesign - just choose the most appropriate one.

I wished I owned the software to test this. That's why I'm asking what works.

what software do you use to view the Indesign pdfs? Accrobat?

You can always download, install and experiment with a trial installation for 30 days.

thanks, good tip!