Exporting high-quality images in PDF from layouts

[Mike96]

Hello,
I am pondering if there is any way of improving bitmap quality when exporting a PDF from a layout. I imported a high quality JPEG to layout. On the right side you can see the image before importing. Sure, it has noise but it's just the matter of rendering. It has noise but it's not compressed. After placing it in layout and exporting the whole layout as PDF, the bitmap quality drops significantly - it gets heavily compressed. You can see the result on the left side. There definitely should be an option to control how much bitmaps are compressed at PDF export.
If there is no way of fixing this, I find it a strong reason for an improvement request.
ArchiCAD 24

[Anonymous]

You need to change your PDF export options to not compress images or down sample

Regards
Scott

[Mike96]

Here are my PDF output options. I don't know what else I can set. And images still get compressed a lot.

[Anonymous]

It could simply be the fact that the original image is using a lossy compression (jpg), try saving original image as TIFF uncompressed and see how this goes. Every time you re-save a lossy compression image you lose more data/ quality

Regards
Scott

[runxel]

OT, but I'm still curious:
How did you get this nice dark layout?

[Anonymous]

runxel wrote:
OT, but I'm still curious:
How did you get this nice dark layout?

I was also wondering how this was done

[Mike96]

It's a free custom theme for Windows, downloaded from Deviant Art. It's called Matte, and it affects the entire Windows look, Notepad, with some third party apps too. For example, ArchiCAD and SketchUp get affected. Internet browsers, Blender, GIMP, Adobe apps - don't. Office bundle - kind of. It vastly decreases contrast in ArchiCAD GUI, and some buttons are barely visible, but I like it anyway. I also set a darker background for my projects, and it seriously saved my eyes when working late at night. There are many custom themes available to download. Some of them are free, many are like $2-3. Steam theme looks nice too.
There are things though that you need to keep in mind, if you want to install them. You'll find instructions at the download pages and you better read them carefully before you hack your system, so it allows installing third party themes. All in all, it's worth it if you like dark GUIs. I can't live without them. I also recommend Dark Reader addon if you use Firefox.

See my post there:
https://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=66173&p=301337#p301337
That's how it looked back when I used Steam theme.

Matte theme you can download from there:
https://www.deviantart.com/kdr3w/art/Matte-758699852

[Minh Nguyen]

Dear Mike,

Thank you very much for the question!

As Scott mentioned, using TIFF or PNG format for the picture would bring a better result as they meant to be lossless. JPG files are compressed by Archicad at PDF exporting, resulting in lower quality. Also, make sure to uncheck the “Transparent Background” checkbox in the Drawing Settings of the picture so that Archicad won't modify it.

From the screenshot, I believe you are printing/saving the layout as PDF? Maybe you can try the Publisher and see if the result is better?

Let me know how it goes for you!

Best regards,
Minh