pieter78
asked on
Adobe InDesign CS: bad image quality after place or paste
Hello,
I am new to Adobe InDesign (CS) which I started using for a club magazine. Until now, I used to work in MS Word... I like the program, but one thing is really annoying: when I add an image (using Place [Ctrl+ D] or just pasting it), the quality is really bad. It's all pixels, text is hard to read and faces become hard to recognize.
If I paste the same image in Word or Photoshop, all goes fine and quality is good.
I guess that I am doing something wrong, but what? I tried several things, like saving as a PSD in Photoshop, converting to GIF, resizing outside InDesign (because scaling even makes things worse)... nothing helps.
Any suggestions?
I am new to Adobe InDesign (CS) which I started using for a club magazine. Until now, I used to work in MS Word... I like the program, but one thing is really annoying: when I add an image (using Place [Ctrl+ D] or just pasting it), the quality is really bad. It's all pixels, text is hard to read and faces become hard to recognize.
If I paste the same image in Word or Photoshop, all goes fine and quality is good.
I guess that I am doing something wrong, but what? I tried several things, like saving as a PSD in Photoshop, converting to GIF, resizing outside InDesign (because scaling even makes things worse)... nothing helps.
Any suggestions?
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Hi Pieter,
Yes, vector files will look VERY pixelated if Display Performance is set to Typical Display.
To answer your questions:
1- No. The reason for Display Performance to exist is to save processing time while working on the document. By displaying a lower-quality image InDesign reduces the amount of processing for both your CPU and your video card, and it also reduces the RAM usage. This is only for display purposes, though; it doesn't affect printing at all.
2- Yes. Go to View>Display Performance and UNCHECK Allow Object-Level Display Settings. Doing this will make your Display Performance settings become global for all images in the project.
3- Yes. As a general rule, images should be sized to print size in your image editing program (Photoshop) for better results. Raster images can become blurry or lose definition if they are shrunk because more pixels are being packed in the same area and when printing some of those pixels have to be dropped. Depending on the project, size your images accordingly at a uniform resolution all across the project. Check with your printer and ask them what resolution should the raster images be; printers love when they're asked for specs, to them it means less possible problems at the moment of RIP'ing the file for production.
4- Yes. If the image size has been increased in InDesign and the resolution was not that great to start with, that will happen. Word may show you a better image on screen but that's because Word is "thinking" 72ppi. InDesign, at High Quality Display, will try to show you how things will look when printed, so what you see will be a more realistic preview than anything Word will show you.
I hope this answers your questions. If you have more doubts please don't hesitate to ask.
Good Vibes!
Lobo
Yes, vector files will look VERY pixelated if Display Performance is set to Typical Display.
To answer your questions:
1- No. The reason for Display Performance to exist is to save processing time while working on the document. By displaying a lower-quality image InDesign reduces the amount of processing for both your CPU and your video card, and it also reduces the RAM usage. This is only for display purposes, though; it doesn't affect printing at all.
2- Yes. Go to View>Display Performance and UNCHECK Allow Object-Level Display Settings. Doing this will make your Display Performance settings become global for all images in the project.
3- Yes. As a general rule, images should be sized to print size in your image editing program (Photoshop) for better results. Raster images can become blurry or lose definition if they are shrunk because more pixels are being packed in the same area and when printing some of those pixels have to be dropped. Depending on the project, size your images accordingly at a uniform resolution all across the project. Check with your printer and ask them what resolution should the raster images be; printers love when they're asked for specs, to them it means less possible problems at the moment of RIP'ing the file for production.
4- Yes. If the image size has been increased in InDesign and the resolution was not that great to start with, that will happen. Word may show you a better image on screen but that's because Word is "thinking" 72ppi. InDesign, at High Quality Display, will try to show you how things will look when printed, so what you see will be a more realistic preview than anything Word will show you.
I hope this answers your questions. If you have more doubts please don't hesitate to ask.
Good Vibes!
Lobo
ASKER
I guess all of my questions have been answered in this topic, thanks for the help!
Thanks Pietr, I'm glad to be of help to you. I wish you the best with your project.
Good Vibes!
Lobo
Good Vibes!
Lobo
ASKER
But: now I tried again, for another object that gave problems, and I saw you have to adjust this per object individually. And for this one, it made a huge difference! I printed a testpage, and the quality was very good. So thanks!
Some questions about this, after that I wil close it:
1) Does the Display Performace make any difference for printing? (e.g. does Typical Display print on paper in lower quality than High Quality... guess not, did not try to save some paper and woods ;-) )
2) Is there a possibility to convert all objects to High Quality at once (including the onces that will be added later)? Is there any reason or advantage?
3) Are you familiar with a loss of quality when you make an image smaller? downscaling)
4) Are you familiar with photos that show a rather " pixelized " view instead of smooth edges of faces and so on?
(MS Word shows it better on screen, but for forests' sake I did not experiment with printing either... yet)
Thanks!