So, I just designed the best book ever. It's a favorites book for one of my clients and I was trying to finish it up and place the order. It seems the only time I work anymore is late at night when Keira is sleeping and I can sit at the computer without little hands pushing buttons, pulling on the mouse or unplugging my hard drive.

I was so pumped about my getting my beautiful VisionArt book and when it came today I could hardly contain myself as I was opening the box. And then, I spent a good thirty minutes crying after I called them because my book was messed up and Yes, it was all MY fault.

Vision Art doesn't print from PDF's (unless you pay a fee) so I design my books in InDesign and then export as a hi-res PDF. From there, I open the PDF in Photoshop and save the spreads as hi-res jpgs. Except, I occasionally get an error where the last image won't save, so I have to export that as its own PDF and open and save.

Well, it turns out, by doing this, somehow the color got all screwed up. I've never had an issue before, or maybe I have and I haven't noticed. I only noticed it because I an element in the book was color matched to the client's invitations and programs. So, I'm looking through the book and I think, "That looks darker than it's supposed to be." I get to the last page and, sure enough, the last page was perfectly right and all of the other pages are over saturated. The nice soft and gentle green is a dark hunter green, except for the cover and the last spread. The last spread is the one page that I had to save as its own spread.

I don't know what happened. So, now I have two books (because I love the book so much I ordered a sample) that are not right. Ugh. So, I am fixing and reprinting it and hopefully, the couple will want to purchase them super cheap as parent books so maybe I can recoup part of my cost. Maybe. Of course, maybe it's not worth it since I'm not happy with them.

I dunno. But the lessons learned:
1. Don't send an order in at 4AM, even if it's ready to go. Wait until the next day to double check it.
2. Double check the color on your final exports to insure they are what you want.

And, if you think you know what's happening, I'd love to know.

Make sure the transparency blend setting is "RGB" and not "CMYK". Also, in the export PDF dialog box, make sure the output color setting is RGB and not CMYK.

Greg, those things are all correct. ??

In design has a known bug trying to export the files. I think Laura found a work around and I'll get her to post when she can.

I'm pretty sure Greg has it right - just check your color settings as you go - and open up the jpgs and compare them side by side with the original indesign document....

I've run in to similar problems in the past - I just wish we could get Adobe to fix this bug with the banding issues and color!

Good luck!
Laura

The color settings are exactly the same and HAVE been. The problem is that there was an error in saving the last page of the design when I brought the PDF into photoshop. So, I had to create a PDF with just that spread on it. That is the only page that was right color wise. The other ones from the original PDF were all over saturated. Both PDF's were exported from InDesign the EXACT same way. So, I am at a complete loss.

Do any of your pages contain transparencies? Depending on how you export an Indesign file, it may try to flatten transparencies and this can alter a few things. Second, are you 100% sure that when you opened the PDF's in PhotoShop that you also kept the same settings.

Second, are you able to recreate the problem? 10 to 1 odds, if color is off its something to do with either the color export settings, or the open dialog color settings in PhotoShop. Are all of the pages you sent to the album company JPEGs with the same color Profile?

Karl