TIFFs get fuzzy when printing to PDF

[Christine_R_]

Hello, I have a framemaker file with imported TIFF images in it; when i print either the TIFFs alone or the Framemaker document, everything looks amazing. But when i convert to PDF, the images become fuzzy. I have my conversion settings for Press Quality, im not sure what the problem could be.

[Matt S - Tech Comm Tools]

Even Press Quality will resample and compress your images.

When in the printing industry, I created a Job Options that turned compression and downsampling off, since they both impacted the final quality of the printed product.

Another possibility: Your images may not be an appropriate resolution for your final print size. A commonly-used yardstick is to divide the number of pixels across by 300 to determine a "maximum" print size for the image.

-Matt

Matt R. Sullivan
co-author Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 11
P: 714.960.6840 | C: 714.585.2335 | matt@mattrsullivan.com

@mattrsullivan LinkedIn facebook mattrsullivan.com

[Christine_R_]

I turned off the compression and downsampling and it worked!! It looks amazing on screen and in my print-out....will it definitely look the same once it goes to press? [i have never adjusted those settings before so i am a little worried that it might look great to me now but once it goes to the printer, the images might get wonky]

[Matt S - Tech Comm Tools]

If your images are CMYK, and are at least 300ppi on printout (technically, 2.7 * printer linescreen is what we used in comm printing) then you should be great.

[Christine_R_]

Thanks so much for your help.....the images looked amazing in the PDF but unfortunately, it made the file size exponentially too large. Looks like I will have to go back to the original hard copy and just scan in the images.

[Van Kurtz]

Christine,

Don't give up yet.

Go back into your joboptions and turn compression and downsampling back on. THEN make sure the downsampling setting for downsampling TO is at least 300 dpi, or whatever your printer suggests. Then set the compression quality to whatever the highest setting is. And I am thinking zip compression may be better than jpeg compression (because jpeg can be lossy). Now create your PDF to a different named file than the one you just made. Now compare the file sizes and the quality of the images.

The large file size comes from turning off compression and downsampling. The goal is to find settings that give you good quality and reasonable file sizes.

In the end, if you are uncomfortable with adjusting compression and downsampling settings and you like the results of turning them off, then I would not worry about the PDF file size. A good printer should have sufficient computer resources to handle large files. A good printer should also have an FTP site to which you can upload the file. If not, burn it to a CD or DVD and take it to the printer.

Van

[Christine_R_]

Yes! i actually dissovered this tactic by accident last night! i didnt realize i initially had my downsampling set to 150 so bumping it up to 300 made all the difference. Thank you very much!