Scripting Acrobat

[Lukas Engqvist]

The only problem I can see is it will be harder to trace such a file since it will say that InDesign was creator of the PDF irrespective of the source of the original PDF, but I'm thinking that is just a minor thing to be aware of.

[leonardr]

Leonard, I am shocked! Pleasantly shocked! I thought for SURE you would say that that is not a proper way to make a pdf.
Are you giving me the Adobe blessing to place a pdf in (1.7) and export back out (1.7)?? I might just owe you a beer and or Coke if so.

Placing a PDF into InDesign(!) and then exporting it is as PERFECTLY REASONABLE thing to do. BE AWARE, that I am saying this ONLY about InDesign and NOT the general case.

and I never turn down free beer .

[leonardr]

The only problem I can see is it will be harder to trace such a file since it will say that InDesign was creator of the PDF irrespective of the source of the original PDF, but I'm thinking that is just a minor thing to be aware of.

In the document-level metadata, that is true. However, the original PDF's metadata will be carried as "object level" metadata in the PDF.

[kaiserwilhelm]

leonard,

Should I ever meet you, Sam Adams Octoberfest on me.
I am still blown away that PDF into INDD back into PDF is safe! FANTASTIC!

[rich apollo]

I am still blown away that PDF into INDD back into PDF is safe! FANTASTIC!

"Safe" is a bit relative. I commonly see issues with PDFs that are handled this way. My RIPping front-end will cite an error about being unable to locate a xObject. The page itself, when opened in Acrobat, will display a pop-up saying that an error exists on the page. I haven't been able to isolate the problem.

[Colorblind]

"My RIPping front-end will cite an error about being unable to locate a xObject. The page itself, when opened in Acrobat, will display a pop-up saying that an error exists on the page. I haven't been able to isolate the problem.

Rich, I believe you're using ApogeeX, am I right? So do I and at some point I was sometimes getting these "xObject" pop-ups in Acrobat when opening a composite PDF that was generated and trapped by ApogeeX (using PDF-Ready TP). When ApogeeX wasn't trapping the file I wouldn't get that error in Acrobat. I tried different things and the only way I could get final composite trapped PDFs out of ApogeeX was by using 2 different hot tickets, the first one would just trap incoming ps and export a trapped ps file to a second hot ticket that would then normalize the trapped ps and export a trapped composite PDF. So in my case it's clear it had nothing to do with InDesign, ApogeeX was the culprit.

[rich apollo]

Yep, ApogeeX. I'm not using PDF-Ready, though.

My situation comes about when PDFs, say advertisements, are placed into a publication being built in InDesign and then exported out as new PDFs. I need to find one of these situations and play with export settings to see if something in there is causing the issue.

I've had to come up with a work-around recently, that begins to close in on the issue. The problematic pages tend to have raster images with transparency. Think of the kind of images that you would've created bit-maps of in the past.