Light Wisdom: Packaging Files for Press in Adobe InDesign
This might be the easiest InDesign tip/tutorial you’ve ever read. Let’s package some files!
If you work with publication, brochures, or any sort of layout projects you have probably requested packaged files or been asked to provide them. Packaging your files is crucial to ensuring that your file renders as expected when sent to someone else. When you don’t package your files, you run the risk of broken lines, fuzzy images and fonts not being installed on the system opening the file – causing a replacement font to be used. In other words – packaging files secures and protects your hard work.
Even if you don’t need the document sent to be printed, packaging final files is ALWAYS a good practice for archiving. If all final files are packaged, you can go back to them in 10 years and they’ll still be perfect and just as you left them. With unpackaged files, once you start moving images around, organizing fonts, etc on your system – your image will slowly start falling apart because it is linking out the these images and fonts. Once packaged, they’ll live locally in the packaged folder and you’ll no longer have to worry about anything breaking.
A brief overview is shown below, or check out our video tutorial here.
