Placing files into InDesign

I generally use PSD format files for placing in InDesign for images where I've done a lot of tweaking. But if my image is fine the way it is, I just leave it as a .jpg image and place in ID. I've been having these files printed commercially for years using .jpg files placed in them and never had a single problem.

Besides, you should be sending PDF files anyway... no need to send the raw ID files and links.

Jpg files, by definition, are compressed in such a way that they give up some detail for file size. The compression literally tricks your eye into seeing what isn't there. Printing only exposes this fact, exposing the "blockiness" of jpg images.

Jpg images are for web only, not for print. Make sure you place eps, tif, or psd images, at 300dpi cmyk for printing, generally. There are some cases where this rule needs to be bent (using Pantone colors, for example) but stick to this and you'll be okay.

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Natobasso
dirtandrust.com
"Powerpoint is not a design application"

sorry, nate, i have to agree with the others. JPG files print fine. there are drawbacks (compression, as you mention, is lossy), but they can be minimized (highest level of compressions, and avoiding saving JPGs multiple times). but i've used JPGs in professional printing in hundreds of files (and in-house many thousands of times) and never had an error. my company stores ~80gb of professional photography we've had done of our buildings in JPG format and use them for in-house and offset printing every day with no issues at all.

and as jimd said, pretty much every stock house in the world supplies their files as JPG. and they're perfectly printable just like that.

still, nothing at all wrong with sending flattened TIF files instead.

to address the original comment, anyone saying you have to save bitmap files as EPS is so far behind the times i would question any advice they gave me. even when i started in this business (15 years ago), the only thing you would ever save as a bitmap EPS was duotones. anything else, you saved as TIF. EPS bitmaps are 2-3X the size of even uncompressed TIFs and created an unnecessary layer of complexity in the file. the advice you got is archaic, at best.

Tiff CMYK for print and I've been working in the print industry for over 20 years. EPS for close-cropped images, again in CMYK. RGB for web applications and yes...powerpoint presentations...only.

Jpegs are a step up from gifs but I would NEVER use them in print. And I don't care how much you say they work great. You are still ceding quality for optimal disk space. TIFF is the way to go. Make your colour corrections et al to the stock jpeg and then save as TIFF or EPS. Any printer worth his weight in gold will tell you the same thing.

And no, Nato, you have not gone insane. I, as many of my associates, use TIFFs for print. Jpegs on the stock resource site have already been compressed once, hopefully not twice for your colours will begin to lose clarity and fill in due to the nature of a jpeg. (Jpegs take a group of similar pixels and adjust them all to the same shade. This reduces the data, making the overall file size smaller, but you lose quality.) AND if you're doing any sort of touchups to the stock photo, which all of us do, and then resaving it as a jpeg you're just sucking for poor quality output.

Great explanation here:
http://www.wfu.edu/~matthews/misc/graphics/formats/formats.html

I agree with Nato. Freaking Graphic Design 101... don't use JPEGs in print!

From experience there's nothing wrong with using CMYK JPGs for print - BUT it is far easier to make mistakes that way.

Working with PSD, EPS and TIFF files is far safer because it forces you to save your files in a certain way which is more or less guaranteed to work.

...surely if jpegs were like satan chasing you down a dark alley, then why would adobe themselves implement such a format in the creation of PDF files fo high end printing?

andrew

...surely if jpegs were like satan chasing you down a dark alley, then why would adobe themselves implement such a format in the creation of PDF files fo high end printing?

andrew

...surely if jpegs were like satan chasing you down a dark alley, then why would adobe themselves implement such a format in the creation of PDF files fo high end printing?

andrew

...surely if jpegs were like satan chasing you down a dark alley, then why would adobe themselves implement such a format in the creation of PDF files fo high end printing?

andrew

I hate em!

In my opinion, I thought the rule about eps/tiff over jpeg was an 'old school' thing... I say that because when I first started out in this industry, I found a lot of printers wouldn't accept jpegs in artwork.

Then suddenly, jpegs were perfectly acceptable. I just put it down to better rips on the part of the printers...?

Ever since then, I've always used jpegs in InDesign (and never had an issue with image/colour quality). I can see how such issues could occur, but that is down to the designer being careful imo.

I'm not saying Nathaniel is wrong at all, but just that people go with what they know I guess? (And I design full page ads for a number of UK National magazines, and never had complaints - indeed, we've actually won awards for them!)

To go back to the original poster - you can put jpegs in InDesign!

:)

I agree when you work in photoshop it is a good thing to have your images saved as an PSD or tiff format, avoiding in this way the compression over compression thing.

But if you have a finished picture you can use jpegs.

On my Adobe Ace exam there was a question about illustrator.

How does Illustrator sends an ai file to the printer with a lot of anchorpoints?

i don't remember the options anymore that Adobe suggested, but I new the answer.

.... as a jpeg

You're complaining that people don't consider YOUR experience valid, yet you choose to ignore everyone else's experience that contradicts yours.

Just because you find a few articles on the Internet stating you should save files as TIF, doesn't discount the fact that many, many designers and printers have no problem printing placed .jpg files. You can show me a million articles stating that .jpg files are lossy, and shouldn't be used for print - and none of them are going to convince me that my own eyes and results are suddenly, after so many years of successfully using jpgs, completely wrong.

I think gwells explains it quite easily. JPG does indeed toss out pixels, but once you print the image with an offset press, the ink gain and dot pattern are going to completely eliminate the tiny amount of image degredation to begin with. So if you can't see the difference when it's printed, what difference does it make?

I see no reason why we should continue this debate, valuable that it is, because you're clearly not going to convince many people of your stance on it, and we're obviously not going to convince you that .jpgs print fine. At this stage, what's the point?

You've posted your thoughts on it - and they're quite valid. But so are those that disagree with you. In short, there's really no right or wrong on this topic, just subjective opinions.

I'm not meaning to stir up the pot per se, but those of you in favour of using jpegs rather than tiffs...would you be confident using a jpeg over a tiff for a 10' display, with an overall graphic area covering 158" x 87"? I've just recently completed one and I used a layered PSD and then flattened it to a CMYK tiff prior to pulling it into InDesign.

Thanks...just curious.

I, like many others, was taught to never place jpegs in my files, and i was taught this by people with considerable knowledge. The reason I was taught this is because back in the day, the RIPs couldn't always handle the compression algorithm and would error out. They wouldn't error out every time, but enough so that it created a rule about placing TIFs.

As far as saving to EPS, this would only be done if you were creating a duotone or an image with a clipping path to be placed in PageMaker or InDesign.

That was what I was taught. Now on to what I do...

Like many others have said, if you open a JPG and edit it in any way, save it to TIF. The thing is, I very rarely come across a JPG that I don't change in some way, even if it is just a minor color correction. I pretty much open and adjust every photo that comes across my desk. That means that I also place a lot of tifs. I wouldn't have a problem placing a JPG, it just doesn't come up for me often.

I have also started placing PSD files into my jobs, when the job calls for it and have not had any problems with that.

Anyhow, this seems to be a sticky point with some of you, but just remember that things change almost daily out here and that keeping up is one of the hardest things we have to do.

This is just my own personal preference.

I prefer to use PSD files in my layouts. If I ever come across a case where a printer won't support a PSD file, then I'd opt for a TIFF over a JPEG. It is only a print versus web thing for me. i feel more comfortable limiting JPEG images to web usage and utilizing TIFFs and EPS files (EPS on a minimal basis at that, unless they're for vectors) if I can't use PSD or AI files for whatever reason.

It's not really based on "because I know so!!", it's just based on personal preference.

I have successfully used JPEG images in a print layout, but I still feel awkward doing it.

PSD and AI is my preference.

Good knowing that technology is constantly adapting and handling all sorts of file types better and better.

i have a .jpg image that was placed in a white background. then another image placed on top. the white background printed but not the .jpg that was placed in it. any ideas?

so let me just describe it this way... background is set to paper - .jpg placed in the background - background prints and .jpb did not. Now on the other hand on the same page i had a background set to paper and a .tiff was placed in the background and the .tiff printed and also the background. i'm thinking this is my problem. there are numerous .jpg through out this piece but none that are placed within a background. they are in front of the background. all of those printed fine.

Like a few others here, I started in this trade when you never ever used a JPEG for projects intended for seps and printing. I have found this thread very interesting, since it seems the technical issues in force back in the day don't always apply anymore. Point made and taken.

However, grasshoppers, we may not always be sending our layouts to printers who are up on the latest technology, or who use that technology to process all their jobs. In order to save myself the pain of finding a job featuring JPEGS print just dandy the first time, but then not even ripping at another, less advanced, shop that I might have to use for the reprint, I will always opt for the most universally successful format: CMYK.TIF.

sorry about the double post.

Ok, I'm old school too.

if you use a professional photographer, they shoot raw, do their corrections, send you a 300dpi rgb tif. That gives the largest color gamut and information. (Do not accept jpgs from a professional photographer-opening up a new can of worms here) Save that original in your archive. Make a copy, resize and convert to cmyk tif for print.

Jpg's lose information. I agree, in many cases, the printing is not great or the paper is poor, that it doesn't matter. But I want to tell my client and the photographer that I used the best option, any problems must be from the printer. If you send a full page ad to a high end mag, you'll want to send the best and can sometimes see the difference.

Stock photos are jpgs so not much you can do about them. I would still convert to tif just because that was how I was taught.