Have you ever needed to rebuild an InDesign layout from a PDF? Has your client ever requested a copy of the images as cropped in your InDesign layout?
In either scenario, you might need a folder full of images in a hurry. Now in the first case, InDesign 2025 allows you to "open" a PDF in InDesign. It will whisk the PDF to the cloud and return you a pretty good approximation of an InDesign layout document. It isn't perfect, but it does get you a good start. Sometimes the images that it generates are slightly different. Therefore, this Acrobat Pro retrieval might still be a good idea.
In the second scenario, the client has asked you for a copy of all the originally-placed images as cropped in their graphic frames from the pages of the InDesign document. A speedy way to fulfill this request is to export out of the final layout PDF.
Begin by opening the final PDF of your publishing project in Acrobat Pro. Click on Tools > Export PDF. Choose Image and also the filetype you would like. Choose either JPEG, JPEG 2000, TIFF, or PNG. Click the tiny gear icon to set specific filetype settings. The real time-saving switch is the Export All Images checkbox near the bottom center.
Here is an example screenshot showing where you should be in Acrobat Pro > Tools > Export PDF:
Finish up the image export by clicking the Export button. It is at this point where you will choose where to export all these image assets. Choose Desktop or browse to any folder you wish. Once it is done exporting the images, you can inspect the folder and see that all the image assets are named with the PDF document name, along with page and number of image built as a long filename. The images will be whatever ppi you set when making the PDF originally.
