Placng pictures across spreads

[KQD]

I noticed inthe latest Layers tutorials for magazine design in Indesign it shows placing a Japanese flag across a 2 page spread. The placement procedure is exactly as I have done for years but I have a question....

When I place pictures across spreads I find that the pictures are often missed out in pdf exports (when done as individual pages with bleed as many printers need for their imposition systems). What I mean is, say you have a 2 page spread and your picture runs from the edge of page 1 across to the centre of page 2. I often find that when exported page 1 plus pic are fine bit page 2 has no pic in place.

Anyone else come across this?

What I do 99% of the time now is duplicate the picture and move the picture box edge to the edge of page 2 so that there are independent picture boxes on page 1 and on page 2.

What do others do? Am I missing something here? I do the exact same thing in Quark as well.

[Len Zigante]

Nope, I've encountered the same problem & what you described is exactly how I handle the situation as well.

In addition, if I have applied any kind of drop shadows, etc. to the image(s) and/or lines spanning the spine, I group (if required), copy & paste inside another graphics box so that the shadow ends crisply along the inside edge. Otherwise one winds up with overlapping shadows along the spine (I primarily do this for our page borders that run along the top & bottom of our pages as we rarely have product images spanning 2 pages). Of course one must expand the other edges of the graphics box containing the shadowed items or the shadows will get cut off there as well.

To my knowledge there is no other "satisfactory" way of doing this (tho I'm open to other ideas if someone knows a better way)

Hope this helps

Len Zigante
Senior Desktop Publisher
Norco Performance Bikes

[KQD]

And I thought it was just me:)

Thanks for confirming that this is an issue. What I can't understand is why after 20 odd years of layout software the vendors haven't adequately resolved this issue. Can it be so hard for the software to automatically crop images and text across spreads? As you say this becomes even more critical when using all those design goodies that Indesign and Quark now offer.

Maybe for CS4 or Quark 8 they can refocus on the production needs more?

PS. As this was covered in a Layers tutorial what do the authors day about it? What do they do in these cases?

[GuyB]

Hi folks,

There is something here that I don't quite understand ! When KQD says :

"When I place pictures across spreads I find that the pictures are often missed out in pdf exports (when done as individual pages with bleed as many printers need for their imposition systems)".

When you work in ID, you work with reader's spread, i.e. continuous pages as the reader will see them. But to be printed, they have to be "imposed" and I never heard of a printer that asked for individual pages to impose a document !? This is what the imposition software is suppose to do : create printer's spread and crop whatever has to be crop that crosses the spreads !

So, as I understand things, what's happening to you is... normal ! Whenever you work in a document with spreads and then, bring this document to individual pages, it's normal that whatever crosses the spline will not be cropped (if you have an image across pages 2 and 3, this image will only be on one of these pages).

[KQD]

Not sure I follow your reasoning here. We work to an exclusively PDF workflow. All printers we work with refer/insist on PDF. For anything more thana 4 page document they ask for individual pdf pages with bleed. So for your 64 page magazine we would supply 60 internal pages as individual pdf and a separate pdf containing the covers as spreads. Of course we DESIGN usign reader spreads but we need to output individual pages.

What happens may well be "normal" but I don't think it is correct. My reasoning is if I lay out a spread (say page 2 and 3 of the internal pages) and have page elements running across the spread, the software should automatically recognise this at output or export time and compensate for this by including the relevant data on the page that is output.

It doesn't. Indesign or Quark. Moreover if you run the pages through the bundles Imposer add on for Indesign spread elements don't stay on the relevant pages either.

This is why I (and obviously others) need to duplicate spread elements and adjust them manually for bleed.

My point is after 20 years of DTP software this still hasn't been addressed. Personally, froma production point of view, I'd rather see this sorted than yet another design effect added.

[DCurry]

Does this happen all the time? I've never encountered it in 13 years of prepress (we print single page postscripts, or export single page PDFs to be placed into our impo software). As a test, I just created a simple 4-pager with facing pages in InDesign CS2 and put lots of images crossing the spine, some with drop shadows. I exported as single pages to a PDF and everything held.

If you run into the issue constantly, maybe you can work with your printer to get them to accept a reader's spread (I assume you are designing in reader's spreads, right?) for the pages that have images crossing the spine. If they are using big-league imposition software, then it is very simple for them to place the spread twice (once into each page in the impo layout) and simply shift the page over in the impo program so that the correct half of the spread show. I do it all the time when designers give me PDFs of spreads. It requires a wee bit more thinking on the prepress operator's part, but it ain't rocket surgery!

[The Repro Kid]

I've been holding back on this one, I'm with D.

[GuyB]

Well ! Thanks, I just learned something here ! I'm not on a pdf workflow so I never had to do this before (I always send my ID files to my printer with wich I have a very good relation). I did what DCurry did : create a 4 pages spread, facing pages, put images and text across the spline and exported it to pdf in single pages and everything got split alright ! So sorry for my erronous intrusion but thanks again.

[eugenetyson]

I've never ever encountered this problem ever. I don't know what you are doing to cause images to go missing or for images not to be produced in the PDF. I have never ever heard anything like this. I've worked in a prepress department handling many many many documents from many clients over the years and I have never ever seen this problem occur.

I have just placed an image on my spread, exported to pdf in single pages, viewed the pdf in spreads and single pages and the image is right there, across the spread and half on one page and half on the other. I don't know what is going on with your documents, or perhaps I don't understand the problem?

[Len Zigante]

Hi Eugene

Perhaps its all in how you've setup your document.

For example, many of our documents are printer spreads (11x17) setup as 8.5x11 facing pages since pages are often inserted or moved around. Usually we have bleeding headers & footers that extend across the spreads and are located on our master pages. This header & footer often contains a single base graphic that is 17.5" long upon which we build our other elements (page numbers, headings, shadows, etc). In our case, its this 17.5" graphic that will fail to print on both sides of our spreads when we PDF as single 8.5x11 pages with bleeds & crop marks.

To me it appears that Indesign sees this graphic as being embedded on only the left hand master so if we print a page that contains the right hand master the graphic goes missing.

Printing as printer spreads would alleviate this problem but its not always feasible. For example our catalogs are divided up into many sections according to content and merchandiser so the section wont necessarily start or end with a full spread. Its also a problem when we create interactive PDFs where our pages must be 8.5x11 to be properly sequenced and accommodate our end user's printers).

[DCurry]

Len,

Maybe you could post a link to let us download one of these troublesome documents - I'd love to see the problem in action.

[Len Zigante]

Len,

Maybe you could post a link to let us download one of these troublesome documents - I'd love to see the problem in action.

Well now isn't this interesting. I went thru archives, modified & tested a whole bunch of files that once had this problem & I'll be darned if I can make it happen again. Once we found a solution to the problem we stuck with it automatically building it into our documents so it wouldn't be a problem again. Since this was a thorn for us quite some time ago I can no longer recall exactly when it occurred or under what conditions. I can only assume that;

a) a patch has since come out & fixed the issue
b) the problem only occurred on occasional pages thus my tests on just a few random pages isn't reproducing it
c) the problem was specific to our inhouse printer & not commercial printers (we get a lot of those kind of issues, usually with embedded pdf fonts)

Sorry all, it seems I can no longer reproduce this problem. I intend to build our newer documents reverting back to our old way of placing such graphics so if the problem comes up again I'll bear this thread in mind & post it as an example.

[eugenetyson]

Hi Eugene

Perhaps its all in how you've setup your document.

For example, many of our documents are printer spreads (11x17) setup as 8.5x11 facing pages since pages are often inserted or moved around. Usually we have bleeding headers & footers that extend across the spreads and are located on our master pages. This header & footer often contains a single base graphic that is 17.5" long upon which we build our other elements (page numbers, headings, shadows, etc). In our case, its this 17.5" graphic that will fail to print on both sides of our spreads when we PDF as single 8.5x11 pages with bleeds & crop marks.

To me it appears that Indesign sees this graphic as being embedded on only the left hand master so if we print a page that contains the right hand master the graphic goes missing.

Printing as printer spreads would alleviate this problem but its not always feasible. For example our catalogs are divided up into many sections according to content and merchandiser so the section wont necessarily start or end with a full spread. Its also a problem when we create interactive PDFs where our pages must be 8.5x11 to be properly sequenced and accommodate our end user's printers).



Do you mean that you are placing the Image across YOUR MASTER PAGES. This is a problem isn't it. As the image gets represented on whether there is a page or not, or even a blank page beside it, the left page will have the image that runs on to the right page, no matter what.

The only way around this is to build your MASTER PAGE with the double page spread of the image. Step and repeat it with 0 movement. Then resize the boxes, grab the far right on the right page and pull in. Click the image behind and grab the far left handle and pull into the center.

I'm sure you're putting the graphic at 17.5 inches across the whole spread.

If it's the same graphic, split it in two and place the image on the pages separately.


I've been trying to recreate your problem, but I just can't. I put a blank down the right and a huge image on the left hand page. The image stretches across to the blank page regardless.

It's just a matter of setting your spreads up properly.

Can you send us a link to a PDF or file I can download so I can have a proper look at it?

[Len Zigante]

Seeing that this appears to no longer be a problem in our workflow, I'm wondering if KQD might provide us with a sample of the problem as it pertains to him or her. I'm curious to see if this problem has actually disappeared or if it's just lurking in the shadows waiting for an opportunity to pounce during a critical deadline.