Printing from InDesign: How to control resampling/sharpening?

[huluvu]

Hello everyone,

besides my website, I like to maintain a printed portfolio to show it to magazine editors or agencies.

A friend of mine who is a graphic designer recently created an InDesign template for me to layout my photos on the 30x40cm sheets.

I noticed that my files (Canon 5D Mk III, exported as full res TIFs from Lightroom with print sharpening turned on) look perfect when printed large on the sheets. However, some of my layouts which show the individual pictures smaller (let's say 13x18cm) look noticeably less sharp than the larger ones.

It must have something to do with how InDesign handles downsampling large assets before it sends them to the printer.

Does anyone know if InDesign CS6 has options for handling printed images better when it comes to interpolation/sharpening?

[JeanMichel]

InDesign is really strictly a layout program. CS6 InDesign is quite good at making small size adjustments (10% or so) when one is lazy but it really needs an exact end use size image. If your print image is, say, 10 by 13, then you should size the image accordingly in an image editor such as PS; same for resolution, colour mode (cmyk, rgb), output sharpening for the printing device and so on. Typically, files are exported to a specific PDF flavour for proofing or printing.
Jean-Michel

[samsterid]

You may have checked this already, but in the Print dialog box, make sure under Graphics that Images/ Send Data is set to All - the default is Optimized Subsampling, which can reduce the resolution of the print.

Sam