Adobe InDesign’s hidden transparancy-flatteners

InDesign’s standard transparancy-flattener setings (Low, Medium and High) are nice, but to get your artwork flattened just right the settings really need some tweaking. Just about everything I create is done using InDesign so applying the right transparancy-setting is very important indeed. When I’m talking about ‘the right setting’ I mean ‘right for print and ‘artwork to be delivered as a Certified PDF’, of course. There is no need to go experimenting. A group of companies inclusing Adobe and Enfocus have already done that for your convenience. You just need to click the download button and install the proper settings.

Transparancy is great, no doubt about it. But for now I’m still obliged to deliver Certified PDF files. And those PDF’s can not contain any transparancy. So they’ll need some flattening. It took them some time (a few years) but the Ghent Work Group finally got together and decided what the best settings would be. The Ghent Work Group is “an international assembly of industry associations and experts; whose goal is to establish and share process specifications for best practices in graphic arts workflows. Their members are well know, Enfocus, Callas, Agfa and many others.

So what are these settings?

All you need to do is go to CertifiedPDF.net, open a free account and start downloading. The most important settings are MagazineAds, NewspaperAds, Sheetcmyk and SheetSpotHiRes. Although there are four basic settings, there are only two flattening presets and they’re hidden. There’s a flattening-preset for the “everyday artwork” called “GWG 2400” and a setting especially for newspaper-ads called “GWG1270”.

The file you’re looking for is called ‘SheetCmyk_1v3.pdfs’ and it contains everything InDesign needs. After downloading run InDesign and go to File / Presets PDF Export / Select… There’s a .pdfs for each of the four settings and you can download and import all four of them. After import you’ve got the official InDesign Export settings all ready to go when you select ‘Export’. Now you didn’t specify it, but by importing the settings you also imported the transparacy-flattening settings. Isn’t that nice. Now you’re ready to go and you don’t have to worry about the transparancy- or exportsettings any more.