good jpg or tiffs by publisher ?

[Anonymous]

simple but big problem.... want to publish my plans as a jpg or tiff. but the quality is horrible. how can i modify the quality?

thanks jens

[Anonymous]

Having the same challenge.. png does great for web publishing, but for print all formats seem to save in a raster format, even windows metafile, which is a vector format. Looks as if it is a screen capture, rather than entity export.. and I can't find a graphic program that will properly convert dwg to squeaky clean tiffs.. I don't know of any format better than tiff for press publishing..

[Karl Ottenstein]

Jens wrote:
simple but big problem.... want to publish my plans as a jpg or tiff. but the quality is horrible. how can i modify the quality?

thanks jens

If it must be a graphic format, then do not use jpeg, a lossy format designed for continuous tone images which yields ugly results for linework. Instead, tiff is fine ... or any of the lossless and/or fixed-palette formats such as GIF/GIF32, PNG/PNG-8.

To get the best quality, print your plans to PDF. Then, open the PDF in Photoshop and respond to the dialog that appears with the desired pixel dimensions of the image... now save the image in your desired format.

HTH,
Karl

[Achille Pavlidis]

To get the best quality, print your plans to PDF. Then, open the PDF in Photoshop and respond to the dialog that appears with the desired pixel dimensions of the image... now save the image in your desired format.

HTH,
Karl

thank you very much Karl!!! i was trying to publish some decent pdf files with many textures on elevations, and couldn't reduce the file size of the pdf... now i tried your suggestion and it works!!! the only problem is that i have to crop a little bit the border of the document as it comes with the full paper size but its ok...
thanks!!

[Anonymous]

Karl and Jens,

I found the Windows Metafile (wmf) to produce the crispest print output once inserted on MS Publisher. It's even as sharp as the original pdf. As expected for line work a vector format sharpest. Karl I don't have Photoshop but found Macromedia Freehand opens pdfs even though it's file open dialog doesn't list it as openable... go figure.

Thanks!

[Karl Ottenstein]

Achille wrote:
thank you very much Karl!!!

You're welcome! 😉

[Karl Ottenstein]

Rashid wrote:
I found the Windows Metafile (wmf) to produce the crispest print output once inserted on MS Publisher. It's even as sharp as the original pdf. As expected for line work a vector format sharpest. Karl I don't have Photoshop but found Macromedia Freehand opens pdfs even though it's file open dialog doesn't list it as openable... go figure.

Good thing to note, Rashid! ...especially since a lot of people use Publisher/Word. WMF is MS's own vector format ... and yes, any vector format will be sharpest under any scaling (as will happen when printing vs screen preview). With an image (raster) file, one has to plan on the final print or display resolution in pixels.

(I tried your suggestion of opening a PDF in Freehand (version 10), and PDF was an option in the open dialog, but nothing displayed...? Might be because my PDF was in a newer format that the older version of Freehand didn't understand...)

Of course, once you jump from the first question on generating an image file to the one of using the drawing in Publisher ... then we get to the more general issue of publication which is where I think the higher-end Adobe Creative Suite 2 has the edge. A PDF that is inserted into an InDesign CS2 (Publisher on steroids) document will be automatically rescaled to appear cripsly at the proper resolution of the target... and with uniform color management. Ditto any other graphic format - vector or raster: if a very high res TIFF is inserted, or an Illustrator vector file (perhaps created by opening a PDF of the plan and editing it), the placed graphic is intelligently linked to the original and InDesign CS2 automatically causes the proper down-conversion to take place for the print target. No thinking by the user. Similarly, if GoLive CS2 receives the same info, the smart objects there automatically convert to the target web graphic format and pixel res. All links are live, so updating any source PDF/tiff/etc results in automatic update of the publication (and the automatic conversions). 😉

Karl

[Anonymous]

Karl,

My prior test was using a pdf generated by DataCAD which I assumed should work with a Amyuni Converted file.. Wrong!? I get the same blank.. Something in the converter as it looks fine in Acrobat. Just when you have something solved.. Perhaps there is a later Amyuni version? OR I get a different converter OR spend on Photoshop CS2??

Seems a smoother workflow but we are quite entrenched in Macromedia Studio..

[Karl Ottenstein]

Rashid wrote:
OR spend on Photoshop CS2??

Ah, glad it wasn't just me. The PDF I tried was created with Acrobat 7 I think (but could have been Amyuni).

I'm PRETTY sure that Photoshop Elements will open PDF files. And it is usually at around $70 street price I think and has an impressive subset of PS features. I think you can download a 30 day trial from the adobe web site.

I have been in the Macromedia Studio MX camp for some things until Adobe CS2 ... I may wean myself of Dreamweaver MX now in favor of GoLive CS2, other than for scripted ASP pages that access databases, since Dreamweaver provides live preview/scripting for that kind of stuff. I'm so pleased with where the Adobe line is going, that I'm even considering switching my video editing software from Ulead Media Studio Pro to Adobe ... Just so nice that all Adobe apps behave alike and play friendly with each other now. Huge chunk of change ($$) though.

Cheers,
Karl

[gerd]

hi,

another (free) possibility to get a good quality bitmap from pdf files is the usage of ghostscript in connection with ghostview (windows).
the installation is a little tricky, but then it workes well.
But I didn't try it with a pdf from acrobat7, perhaps there are problems.