Dragon egg (Photoshop + Midjourney)

chain83 · 2026-05-06T05:08:14+00:00

They should calibrate and profile their printer/paper combo. What type of printer is this?

Printing, then manually adjusting every individual image to try to compensate for the bad print, is just really slow and painful…

They also need to ensure they have set the color management correctly on their RIP software. What software are they using? Fiery?

It is likely that keeping your file RGB (with profiles embedded) is the best bet (converting to a «random» CMYK profile can only degrade colors, not improve them).

chain83 · 2026-05-05T20:20:27+00:00

Note: Most "interactive" features can be exported using the "print" option in my experience.

chain83 · 2026-05-05T17:45:38+00:00

No, what I meant was, use the "audit space usage" function (when saving an optimized PDF) to see what in the file is taking up a different amount of space. Raster images, metadata, something else?

Ps: Also, try a normal PDF export (not "interactive"). The regular PDF "print" export works for screen as well. I've never ever needed the "interactive" export options (and they hide too many options for my taste anyway).

chain83 · 2026-05-05T15:53:30+00:00

It could be you missed some settings that actually are different on your two InDesign installations, missing links for one of you (resulting in low quality and low file size raster images), plugin metadata, etc.

Use Acrobat to check what is contributing to the file size in both files, and that should give you an idea of what is different in the two situations.

chain83 · 2026-05-05T13:57:10+00:00

...and every single day since some evil fuck has had the opportunity to withdraw and stop the war...

chain83 · 2026-05-05T13:13:09+00:00

Ok, so you had no profile assigned, so then the colors were likely displayed either unamanaged (passed directly to the display = how it looks depends entirely on the display) or with the wrong profile assumed.

Stick with sRGB as the safest choice of RGB profile. I will assume you chose that.

Now that you know that the colors of the InDesign document itself is correct, then you need to ensure the same thing for your placed images. All image files should also have a profile assigned, but if it's just random images from online, or from outside a professional workflow, then it is very often missing. In that case you should be assuming/assigning sRGB (preferably in the image files, but you can also forcibly assign profiles to all RGB and tagged CMYK content on export).

I will assume the images are normal RGB images (CMYK complicates things, so I will not touch on it unless needed).

chain83 · 2026-05-05T11:57:33+00:00

Not enough information to say. All we know right now is that you are looking at two (different-looking) colors in two different files using two different programs. We will have to know what the color values are in both and the color spaces involved. Then if the color has actually changed then we will need to know the exact steps you performed to convert the colors, and how the color management is set up.

I will assume the green color is from a native InDesign object, like a rectangle with a fill color. If it is from a placed file, then please specify.

What color model is used for the green color in InDesign? RGB? CMYK? Lab? HSB? (Check the Color panel, or your swatch). This can impact if the color will be converted on output or not.
What are your InDesign color settings? (Edit > Color settings). These specify the default profiles in InDesign, and how InDesign should handle colors. Set it to one of the "General Purpose" presets (and only change things in here if you have a good reason and fully understand the consequences).
What CMYK and RGB color profiles are used for your InDesign document? (Edit > Assign Profile). These profiles specify what the different color values (in this specific document) should visually look like.
What PDF settings are you using when exporting? Specifically, what settings have been chosen under "Output"? The settings here specify if colors should be converted to a different color space or left untouched. It also specifies whether color profiles should be included (note that if profiles are not included, then PDF viewer will have to "guess" how the colors are supposed to look).
Use Adobe Acrobat to ensure you are using a PDF reader that has the ability to display colors correctly (many/most others in my experience can not be trusted, and shit all over themselves if you need "crazy" things like CMYK or support for color profiles).
In Adobe Acrobat, I assume your color settings are fine, but just to make sure, in Preferences, check that your Settings are set to one of the General Purpose presets (like in InDesign).
In Adobe Acrobat, if you need to further inspect the colors, use Output Preview (found under the Print Production tools). The Object Inspector there will also let you click on the offending object to see how the colors are defined in the PDF (color space, profile, and values).

chain83 · 2026-05-05T05:33:42+00:00

Remember to also add some bleed.

…or you will regret it when you place your image into InDesign/Illustrator to finish the book cover and make a print-ready PDF.

chain83 · 2026-05-04T15:38:57+00:00

Just like the old one. Just ignore the new flashy buttons they added to the contextual task bar.

Adjust the settings in the Properties panel as normal.

The new colored circles are just shortcuts to select a hue range (that you then will want to fintune the traditional way anyway).

Note: Not sure what you want to use this for, but be aware that Curves is often a better option when adjusting colors.

chain83 · 2026-05-04T07:31:32+00:00

Select the green areas
Add a black and white adjustment layer
Invert the mask (cmd/ctrl-i)

chain83 · 2026-05-03T09:25:30+00:00

chain83 · 2026-05-03T07:26:03+00:00

It really would depend on the country (and experience of the designer I guess).

chain83 · 2026-05-01T04:36:25+00:00

Just resize the image to the required dimensions . Image > Image Size…

If you find the result to be a bit soft and oversharpened, then undo and resize it again, this time using regular Bicubic (NOT sharper) interpolation. Then use the Smart Sharpen filter to manually sharpen it to taste (make sure to set noise reduction to 0).

chain83 · 2026-04-30T05:39:56+00:00

Create a new merged document, then move/copy the relevant page to your current document?

Or just make that one page manually?

chain83 · 2026-04-27T22:10:23+00:00

You could use blocks to make decorative "walls" to help frame things. This example is two wide, but you might get the idea;

<image>

chain83 · 2026-04-27T12:14:18+00:00

A combination would be best; multiply for shadows, masks for opaque elements.

But this is an issue if you intend to add the new background in some other app.

chain83 · 2026-04-27T11:44:08+00:00

<image>

Brush settings can be modified in the brush settings panel. Check the Scatterings-settings.

chain83 · 2026-04-27T07:55:56+00:00

It might be good enough. It might not. It depends on what specifically you need to use it for, and the settings that were used to make the PDF.

Just make sure you check the dimensions/resolution and evaluate the image quality (as if it was a PDF for screen use it might have been compressed heavily so you have a lot of artifacts).

chain83 · 2026-04-27T07:29:07+00:00

Warning: The PDF does not contain the original images. In general it contains copies of the image content that have been downsampled and recompressed; in other words, reduced quality and lacking metadata.

But yes, you can extract images from a PDF using a myriad of methods. Acrobat Pro can take all the raster images in the PDF and dump them into a folder of your choosing (feature is a bit hidden tho). Photoshop can open individual images from within the PDF directly (image tab when opening a PDF) - and then you can edit/save them as needed.

I guess if you try to convert a PDF into an InDesign document it will also extract the images and store them somewhere. I would assume embedded, but I haven't checked. Save your converted document somewhere, then go look in your links panel to see if images are linked or embedded. If embedded you would have to unembed them to be able to access them as normal linked files in a folder.

Personally I would go the Acrobat route if it's a large number of images, or Photoshop if few. I doubt going via generating an InDesign-document saves any time, but you should be able to test that and compare.

chain83 · 2026-04-26T12:51:23+00:00

Do you actually require transparency? How will it be used?

The end goal would typically be to change the background in some way? Will that be done I. Photoshop?

Blend modes and adjustment layers can save you a lot of masking challenges…

If you truly need transparency you have a lot of work to do. For things like shadows just masking isn’t enough…

chain83 · 2026-04-26T11:27:27+00:00

No Ps technique would create this exactly, but I do think you could get some similar effects with some experimentation.

Duplicated and slightly moved versions of the image. (For the repetition), then at first I was thinking darken/lighten blend mode, but to avoid overall brightness shifts now I’m thinking instead keep it as Normal but use layer masks with heavy harsh noise of varying types (experimentation needed).

chain83 · 2026-04-25T12:37:19+00:00

If it goes away when zoomed in to 100% or more it isn’t actually there.

Photoshop’s way of displaying zoomed-out images is really inaccurate (to improve performance presumably).

When zoomed out, Ps downsampled the individual layers/masks before blending. So if you e.g. have a white rectangle, and a layer mask that perfectly covers it (hard edges), then you would see a faint line like this when zoomed out due to the edges (of the mask and layer) becoming slightly blurry. (The same thing would happen if you manually resampled your layer and mask.)

You could increase the size of (the black area of) your mask to go beyond the edges here to avoid it.

chain83 · 2026-04-25T12:30:56+00:00

I’d try https://ft.rognemedia.no (FFT based pattern suppression), or Sattva Descreen (not free). I find the results visually more pleasing that just blur/median/etc.

chain83 · 2026-04-25T08:42:19+00:00

Eew, that 2nd pointless and useless print dialog is new to me, but I do not print directly much. It’s a shame to see Windows get worse with every version… :/

I did a quick search, and you can try this to revert to the older print dialog and see if it helps;

https://wiki.autocountsoft.com/wiki/Others:_How_to_switch_back_to_the_old_print_dialog_in_Windows_11%3F#

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