File conversion workflow ideas

gprovan

Member
I had a client who I used to send PDF proofs for each job. Unfortunately, we lost the tender which was given to a different designer.
They sent these PDFs to the new designer who just amended them and charged full price for designing from scratch.

To prevent this from happening again, what I want to do is export a JPG from InDesign and then convert to PDF, rather than exporting a PDF directly.
This would hopefully prevent anyone in the future from being able to amend and extract bits and pieces.

I know that I can export as a JPG, open in Acrobat or Preview and then save as a PDF.
But does anyone know an easy automated way of doing this in one step? I tried Automator but couldn't get it to work properly.

Thanks (y)
 
When exporting your pdf from indesign you can password restrict the editing capabilities of the pdf. The file will open just fine in a pdf reader so your client shouldn't need the password but once it hits illustrator or similar a password is required to extract the content.

Screen Shot 2017-12-13 at 13.58.41.png
 
Thanks for that, but it's pretty easy to bypass the password; I have to do it quite often.
I need a more 'belts and braces' approach and would rather go down the JPG route.
 
I used to have a script that did this but I cannot find it now.

Best thing to do though is low resolution - and choose PDF 1.4 - which flattens everything and set the colour mode conversion to RGB. Which turns everything including black text to RGB.

You could also have another layer that you can activate for proofing - and have DRAFT at 50% tint - when you make the PDF 1.4 it will flatten it and means the DRAFT will be near impossible to remove
 
Best thing to do though is low resolution - and choose PDF 1.4 - which flattens everything and set the colour mode conversion to RGB. Which turns everything including black text to RGB.

Yeah, was gonna say, low resolution is the method I tend to use. The client can see the output, but can't actually use or amend it without a version supplied by myself.
 
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