Re: Query on the slowness of printing PDFs and their quality

[Matthew Stern <MAStern -at- PLATSOFT -dot- COM>]

J. Foster wrote:
> 1. It contains screenshots. These were BMP images converted to PCX =
> format and are black and white and not too large.
<--SNIP!-->
>Anyway, on screen, =
> and printed out, they look dreadfully blurry,

I also had a problem with blurry screenshots in PDFs. To fix them, I
changed the graphics compression settings in Distiller. To get to these
settings in Distiller 3.0, select Job Options from the Distiller menu.
In the Job Options dialog box, click the Compression tab. The settings
we now use are:

     Color Bitmap Images:
        Downsample to 1200 dpi
        Automatic Compression: LZW/JPEG Medium

     Grayscale Bitmap Images:
        Downsample to 1200 dpi
        Automatic Compression: LZW/JPEG Medium

     Monochrome Bitmap Images:
        Downsample to 1200 dpi
        Manual Compression: CCITT Group 4

I also found that if you are using Windows 95 or NT 4.0, you need to use
a color printer driver to get colors in the PDF. If you use a driver for
a black-and-white printer, it converts the colors in your document to
gray scale. When you use the color printer driver, make sure you set it
to color printing. I found that the driver is set to gray scale by
default.

Hope this helps.

============================================
Matthew Stern
Sr. Technical Writer
Platinum Software Corporation

E-mail  mailto:mastern -at- platsoft -dot- com
Web     http://members.aol.com/mastrn/

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The opinions here are solely my own.
============================================


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