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Re: Query on the slowness of printing PDFs and their quality
Subject:Re: Query on the slowness of printing PDFs and their quality From:Melissa Fisher <MFisher -at- AUTOMATEDLOGIC -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 12 Nov 1997 10:47:04 -0500
>1. It contains screenshots. These were BMP images converted to PCX =
>format and are black and white and not too large. I'm sort of guessing =
>about the PCX format, perhaps there's a better one. Anyway, on screen, =
>and printed out, they look dreadfully blurry, rather like you're looking =
>at them underwater. This is regardless of the setting I have for 'Smooth =
>text and monochrome images'. Does anyone know of a definitive, or at any =
>rate 'least bad', way of putting graphics into PDFs?
>
>2. When you try and print it, the file's amazingly slow. About an hour =
>of spooling to the printer. It's only 80 pages long, and is 800K, and I =
>don't get any trouble printing a similar size document in Word. This =
>doesn't seem particularly affected by what DPI setting I have. The =
>printer is a network HP LaserJet IV. Has anyone else had any troubles =
>like this? If it's just my printer set up, I really don't mind: I can =
>wait; if this would effect the average recipient of the document, with a =
>desktop and his/her own printer then I'd be worried.
I don't know much about graphics formats, so I won't even try to help,
except to say that we use 256-color .bmp files with no problem at all. Are
you using Acrobat Distiller, or just the PDF Writer. IME*, You will pretty
much always get better results using the Distiller than the PDF writer.
As far as printing goes, I remember that version 2.1 of Acrobat was VERY
slow to print, as slow as you describe. Things seem to have improved much
with version 3.0, so I wonder if perhaps you have the version 2.0
compatibility setting on. I think this setting is only available in the
Distiller, so if you are not using Distiller, I guess this is not your
problem! :-) We do notice that Acrobat prints a little slower than other
programs, and we also use an HP 4 over a network, but since version 3.0 it
has not been so slow as to be annoying.
I know this isn't much, but I hope it helps!
Melissa Fisher
mfisher -at- automatedlogic -dot- com
