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RE: Viso PDFs look poor -- Long

Subject: RE: Viso PDFs look poor -- Long
From: "Fred Ridder" <docudoc -at- hotmail -dot- com>
To: rickbishop -at- austin -dot- rr -dot- com, techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 11:44:22 -0500

I have to disagree with the advice to use the printer driver for some
physical printer when creating PDF. There is no legitimate reason
to use any driver other than Adobe's own PDF-specific printer driver,
which is installed by default when you install the Adobe Acrobat tool
suite (either Standard or Professional). This printer driver has had
various names in older versions of Acrobat, but in current versions it
is named Adobe PDF.

The PDF-specific printer driver generates much cleaner PostScript
code because it will not include hardware-specific device control
codes that Distiller would then have to strip out of the code. It
also generates PostScript that is not constrained by any of the
physical limitations of a particular printer--things like resolution,
maximum and minimum page sizes, and non-printable margins.
For example, when you use the Adobe PDF printer driver, you
can use arbitrary page sizes (from postage stamp size up to large
posters), and the image can extend all the way to the edge of
the page.

And for the record, HP printer drivers are probably the worst
choice to use when creating PDF, because for several years HP
has been using "PostScript-compatible" drivers rather than true
PostScript. Yes, that's partly an issue of HP wanting to avoid
having to pay a royalty to Adobe for every printer they sell, but
no clone is ever 100% compliant with the standard it emulates.

My opinions only; I don't speak for Intel.
Fred Ridder
Intel
Parsippany, NJ

From: "Rick Bishop" <rickbishop -at- austin -dot- rr -dot- com>
To: <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Subject: RE: Viso PDFs look poor -- Long
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 18:48:48 -0600

Hi Kirk: I haven't had that problem in a long time, so I'll share what I
do. Maybe it will help. I've been making pdfs from visio for about 7-8 yrs.
Get the drivers for the HP 8550 Color Laser Jet and install on LPT1
(dnld from hp.com) Over the years, I keep moving to the latest high end
postscript printer drivers from HP and others. If it's a CAD drawing, I use
the Panther Imagesetter driver or one of the HP large format postscript
printer drivers.
At work I probably have 8 printers installed that I've actually never seen.
Anywho, checkmark the "print to file" box with the 'virtual' printer
selected. Some drivers add .prn or .ps, but if it doesn't add an extension
to the file, just add .ps yourself. Make sure you set the printer to convert
Truetype fonts to outlines and set the printer output to at least 600 dpi.
Then open Distiller, use the Press profile or set up your own, choose
"embed all fonts" and open the .ps file with Distiller. It should drop the
pdf into the same folder.

BTW, make use of Distiller's help files and work over the Adobe site. There
are tons of excellent info on creating pdfs there.

Remember GIGO. If your placed image in visio is 100dpi, it will look like
cr_p no matter what you do. Any imported artwork put in visio should be 300
dpi at a minimum for a decent pdf; 600 is better. And don't resize imported
images in visio. Use Photoshop.

When you are happy with the appearance, experiment with various settings to
reduce the file size.

Kirk, If trying this doesn't seem to work for you, send me your worst
offender and I'll try to troubleshoot your issues.

rick

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RE: Viso PDFs look poor -- Long: From: Rick Bishop

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