A.S.,

May I suggest you ask the guys at your print center exactly why they insist on Print to PDF? Ask them what problems they've experienced with Save As PDF.

Some users have been able to produce smaller file sizes when printing some PDFs instead of saving them. Many prefer the greater control afforded by the Save As PDF dialog. The Adobe folks who have visited this forum tend to recommend the Save As route.

But I make the suggestion so you can determine whether this is merely your guys' superstitions or outmoded work flow or something peculiar about their equipment or something else. Listen in particular to how clear and specific their explanation is. It will reveal a lot.

I'd really like (for both the OP and me) for others to weigh in on this. I have never gotten the impression from my reading nor my discussions with other artists nor threads on this forum in recent years that Save As PDF is in any was less PostScript-compliant than a Print to PDF. But we needn't wildly and wrongly speculate about this. There are people here who know.

Hi Wade - Just curious... if the file size is different between the 2 methods wouldn't that mean the underlying code is different too? One of these things is not like the other?

I am dealing a lot lately with PDF's. I'm in the process of writing a book, It was formated  in word and I had to pay someone to create a "Print Ready" PDF.. I had no clue all the work that goes into creating a Print Ready PDF. I'm not sure if there were using illustrator or not.

As far a vector I know you can blow that puppy up to billboard size, not sure you want to do that tho :O)

Blessings,

George

So that means the 2 methods are different. All things are not equal here. I've been thinking back... if memory serves the difference between the 2 that I found w/ EFI Postscript Level 3 RIPS attached to Canon and Xerox printers was that printing to pdf would eliminate the white lines that would print at the boundaries of the atomic regions when the pdf was generated via Save As. I also remember the good old days when we first wrote a .ps file and then ran that through Distiller to get a pdf to print. Now I'm dating myself. And to get a print ready pdf (even now) from InDesign you need to Export because Save As doesn't work. (And don't get me going on Adobes infuriating inconsistencies between the "Suite"!) Just for kicks I built a simple Illustrator file, did a Save As and a Print pdf and then opened the resultant files into Word. The code looks very different. I'm not saying one is superior to the other but they do not mirror each other. All things are not equal. Like fraternal vs. identical twins?

bottom line... do as your service provider requests. if/when there is a problem the ball is in their court.

On one of my jobs I did testing to improve workflow at a company, and found that by printing to .pdf write on WinXP at the time, that I could get the .pdfs significantly smaller(due to some buried settings) so we could attached a dozen .pdfs to one email and not go over the email attachment limit. This was for trade show graphics so the page sizes were large also. I realize you are looking for the oposite which is quality not file size, but just wanted to let you know my experience.

I really can't see there being a difference in quality between both settings, as long as both settings do not have compression on them. The print center guys will have to give you more information, as they may have found something that works better on their systems, or at a minimum they may believe that to be the case.