Practical Uses: How to Export PDF Files in Adobe InDesign

Whitney Holden is an award winning graphic designer, creative director, design mentor, artist, entrepreneur, and proud Mommy. She currently owns and operates her own design and illustration studio.

Share your designs with clients by learning how to export PDFs in Adobe InDesign. Follow these simple steps to make your life less stressful!

A PDF file format is the easiest way to share your designs with clients and coworkers. PDF stands for Portable Document Format, and unlike other file formats that flatten and rasterize your design (JPG, PNG, TIFF), your images, fonts, and vectors remain intact. Using compression and quality settings can create a PDF perfectly optimized for email, or one that’s ready for professional printing.

A PDF reader like Adobe Acrobat (or many free alternatives) will allow your recipient to view and make comments on PDFs of your design work. Other practical uses of PDFs include interactive portfolios, résumés, contracts, questionnaires, and intake forms. Follow the steps below to start exporting PDFs in Adobe InDesign today!

Step 1: The Basics of PDF Exporting

To export a PDF file, simply press Command + E or choose File > Export. In the next menu, you can choose your desired Format from the dropdown menu. 

You can choose multiple formats from the dropdown here.

You’ll notice that there are two options for PDF:

1. Adobe PDF (Interactive) is for documents that have interactivity like videos, links, and buttons already added in your InDesign layout. 
2. If your document doesn’t have any interactivity, choose Adobe PDF (Print).

Step 2: Pick Your Preset

This menu gives us quite a few options, depending on your needs. Luckily, commonly-used settings have already been grouped together for easy grab-and-go exporting. At the top of the Export Adobe PDF submenu, you’ll find a dropdown to choose an Adobe PDF Preset. 

More advanced users will have use cases for the other export settings, but the three most common are described below. You can even create your own preset to customize your work flow.

High Quality Print 

Use this preset to create a high-res PDF for proofing. Images will be downsampled to 300ppi, but your color profiles will not be converted to another color space. 

Press Quality 

Use this preset to create a press-ready PDF that will be printed on your desktop printer or commercially. Resolution is downsampled to 300ppi and RGB colors/images will be converted to CMYK. If you’re unsure whether your file is ready for press, check out this essential guide to preflight.

Smallest File Size 

This preset is handy for making low resolution PDFs for web or email use. Color images are downsampled to 100 ppi, so if they’re looking a little grainy, you can increase this to 150 or 200 in the Compression subpanel.

The image quality is another variable that effects file size. The higher the quality, the bigger the file size.

Select the preset that best suits your needs and click Export. Congratulations, you just made a PDF!

Creating a High-Res PDF with Crop Marks and Bleed

Sometimes, you’ll need to create a file with Crop Marks and Bleed for printing or quick prototyping. To add these items to your PDF, follow the steps above and select the [High Quality Print] preset. To modify this preset, go to the Marks and Bleeds menu on the left and check the Crop Marks and Use Document Bleed Settings. 

It’s important to note that if you didn’t set up Bleed prior to export, this checkbox won’t do anything for you! Close out of the menu and make sure you’ve set up Bleed and your artwork extends properly.

Where’s My PDF?

Sometimes PDFs take a few minutes to export. This is especially true if you’re dealing with a multipage or large document. The Background Tasks panel is useful to monitor the status of your exports. A progress bar will show you exactly how far along your export is, and the order in which it’ll be exported if you have multiple exports in the works. 

If there’s an issue with your export, this is where you’ll find the error message.

In Summary

You now know the essentials for exporting PDFs in InDesign. This blog covers the basics, so learn more by digging into those panels to discover all your options.

Looking for a simple place to start? Create has you covered with over 400,000 assets, 1,500 templates, 500 fonts, and countless free tools to help you design like a pro.

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