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Now for the rest of the issue. This client insists on making a ps and distilling in Distiller 6. However he make the compatibility to Acrobat 4 (1.3). His pdf looks like it has lost some of the transparency. Doesn't the file lose some of its information when it is made compatible to Acrobat 4?
Dov and Leonard may jump in with elaboration, but I hope substantially the same answer...
Acrobat Distiller 6 does a fine job making PDFs. The difference between making PDFs directly from InDesign and rendering PostScript from InDesign and then distilling is that there are many more choices open to the customer when creating PostScript and distilling, and this increases a greater possibility of making errors.
Logic should tell us that the fewer the number of conversions or transformations in a process, especially one so open to misinterpretation as prepress, the less likely the chance for an error to occur. You should try to get your customer to agree with this logic. The folklore that "InDesign makes poor PDF" is not true.
In case further convincing is required: when InDesign creates PostScript, all transparency is resolved or "flattened" using exactly the same software algorithms as when exporting to PDF 1.3. There is no notion of transparency in PostScript like there is in PDF 1.4 or 1.5 (Acrobat 5 and 6). Therefore, whether InDesign is writing PostScript or exporting to PDF 1.3, the result will be essentially the same, excepting extra features in PDF which have nothing to do with printing.
All the customer is doing when going the Distiller route is a) wasting time and b) opening up the possibility of operator error far wider than if they had exported direct.
Good questions, though. InDdesign CS, by the way, exports to the PDF/X standard format that may inspire more confidence on the part of your client in the future.
Gary Cosimini Adobe Systems Inc.
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