12 Replies Latest reply: Jan 7, 2013 11:31 AM by Bill@VT RSS

    Best Settings for Page Display?

    benwiggy Community Member
    benwiggy Dec 23, 2012 10:23 AM

      What are the optimal settings for the Page Display Preference pane? I've tried with and without Smoothing, all the tick boxes, etc.

      But my PDFs still look crappy and jagged compared to other PDF readers, such as Preview.

      It's not a font problem  -- ALL PDFs look the same.

       

      I'm on OS X 10.8, with Acrobat X.

      • 1107 Views
      • Tags:
        • 1. Re: Best Settings for Page Display?
          Bill@VT CommunityMVP
          Bill@VT Dec 24, 2012 3:43 PM (in response to benwiggy)

          I assume that the MAC has the same smoothness feature as on the PC. If so, check the Display tab in the preferences and turn on smoothing.

          • 2. Re: Best Settings for Page Display?
            benwiggy Community Member
            benwiggy Dec 25, 2012 12:41 AM (in response to Bill@VT)

            As I say, I've tried a variety of settings, including Smoothing for fonts, lines, images, etc. And yet PDFs still don't look as good as when displayed in Preview (OS X's default PDF reader).

             

            Do you recommend turning on ALL the smoothing checkboxes?

            • 3. Re: Best Settings for Page Display?
              benwiggy Community Member
              benwiggy Jan 6, 2013 5:32 AM (in response to benwiggy)

              Really? No one know the optimal settings for displaying PDFs in Acrobat?

              • 4. Re: Best Settings for Page Display?
                Test Screen Name CommunityMVP
                Test Screen Name Jan 6, 2013 5:36 AM (in response to benwiggy)

                I can't speak for everyone, but from my perspective I've never felt there was any kind of problem. That suggests that either

                - you are particularly sensitive to some aspect of it, or

                - there's something not quite right in your system

                 

                If you want to carry this forward, consider taking screen shots of the bit of the same PDF in Acrobat and in Preview. It might be that it will be an obvious problem, or we might in unison go "eh?"

                • 5. Re: Best Settings for Page Display?
                  benwiggy Community Member
                  benwiggy Jan 6, 2013 5:51 AM (in response to Test Screen Name)

                  Acrobat.pngSafari.png

                  Here you go. Top image is Acrobat, lower one (larger) is Preview. The Preview one is much crisper and cleaner.
                  The Acrobat one is with Smooth Line Art and Enhance Thin Lines ON. If I turn both those off, it looks worse.

                  This is a vector image (the PDF, not the PNG).

                  • 6. Re: Best Settings for Page Display?
                    Bill@VT CommunityMVP
                    Bill@VT Jan 6, 2013 4:34 PM (in response to benwiggy)

                    Are you saying one is a capture of a PDF screen and the other of a PNG screen? Preview should be able to view a PDF on the MAC. I agree the upper image is not as clean. What happens if you zoom in? It might be helpful if you could post on page of the music for us to look at in various viewers on our systems.

                    • 7. Re: Best Settings for Page Display?
                      benwiggy Community Member
                      benwiggy Jan 7, 2013 12:52 AM (in response to Bill@VT)

                      NO, they are both PNG screengrabs of PDF images. One is a PNG screengrab of a PDF displayed by Acrobat; one is a PNG screengrab of a PDF displayed by Preview. If I were comparing PDFs in Acrobat to PNGs in Preview, that would be silly.

                       

                      The Acrobat image does get better if you zoom in, though the diagonal lines are still quite jagged. However, at a percentage where I can see the whole page -- or even just the Page Width at 200% -- Acrobat makes for very unpleasant reading.

                       

                      This doesn't just happen with music -- it's all PDFs -- but music shows it the most clearly, perhaps because it's thin straight lines and other simple objects.

                       

                      So, still: no one has experienced anything like this? In which case: what settings do you have for Page Display in Acrobat?

                      • 8. Re: Best Settings for Page Display?
                        Bill@VT CommunityMVP
                        Bill@VT Jan 7, 2013 6:33 AM (in response to benwiggy)

                        Thanks for the clarification on the PDF vs PNG, your post was not clear. I am on a PC and generally the smoothing settings resolve such issues. By expanding, you are making clear that the image is a vector graphic and not a bitmap that will become pixelated when expanded. It is apparently just a display issue as you say. Unfortunately, you may have to wait for some MAC users to get a better feel about the smoothing. It might be of interest to comment about the results of printing a page -- is the smoothing effective?

                         

                        Those of us on a PC can look a bit if you post a page of the PDF some place (the whole PDF might be a copyright issue or such). If you like I can send you my e-mail address (I will do a message).

                        • 9. Re: Best Settings for Page Display?
                          benwiggy Community Member
                          benwiggy Jan 7, 2013 6:41 AM (in response to Bill@VT)

                          Thanks, Bill.

                          The two programs print with exactly the same results -- if I was getting different print results from the same PDF, then there would be no hope at all!!

                           

                          I suspect it is something to do with the different mechanisms by which Adobe and Apple each choose to render PDFs on the screen. Increasingly, I use Acrobat solely for editing and manipulation, and do my looking in OS X's apps.

                           

                          Just surprised not to get any Mac users commenting.

                          • 10. Re: Best Settings for Page Display?
                            Bill@VT CommunityMVP
                            Bill@VT Jan 7, 2013 11:04 AM (in response to benwiggy)

                            I tried on AA6, 8, 9, and 11. All displayed in the same way and seems to have a bit of what you are talking about. I am copying the result for AA8 on an Wide-Screen display with full width display of the PDF. The result is

                            musicclip.jpg

                            The best comparison I can probably do on this machine is with GhostView (a PC, not MAC, so I do not have Preview). The result is

                            musicclipGV.jpg

                            Which is similar, but actually not as good as Acrobat. So from what I can see, I get about the same result as your Acrobat view. There may be some issue on how Preview takes advantage of the MAC platform, but that is beyond my scope of experience.

                             

                            Hope this helps some.

                            • 11. Re: Best Settings for Page Display?
                              benwiggy Community Member
                              benwiggy Jan 7, 2013 11:17 AM (in response to Bill@VT)

                              Bill, those results do look marginally better than I'm getting in Acrobat. The lines aren't quite as over-heavy, and the diagonals aren't quite as jagged.

                              Thanks for this, though.

                               

                              So do you have smoothing on or off in Page Display? I find I have to vary those settings for different PDFs.

                              • 12. Re: Best Settings for Page Display?
                                Bill@VT CommunityMVP
                                Bill@VT Jan 7, 2013 11:31 AM (in response to benwiggy)

                                I was editing the message and you came back so the edits got lost. I looked at both Acrobat and GhostView on a 1280X800 laptop. In that case, I would say the GhostView actually looked better. I would venture to guess that it is related to the display algorithm that Adobe is using to interpolate the elements of vector graphics for display on screen. Overall, they all look acceptable, but they each of fine points of appearance that can be annoying (and you are annoyed!).

                                 

                                I have smoothing turned on for both machines. I have done that since about AA5 or so. I did find that on the AA9 machine (this last one) I was able to get more of what you had if I turned off enhance thin lines. It appears that was making the borders of the tie bars larger and making them look strange. For the PDF in question, I had to have smooth line art on to get a nice result. Line art would be for vector graphics. The smooth images is for bitmaps I think. I got the same result in AA XI on another laptop. I do not see that enhance thin lines issue on your plot. My AA8 did not have the "enhance thin lines" option, but smoothing was on. For the music, only the smooth line art is important. You can also set the setting for the smoothing of text, though that might be different on a MAC.

                                 

                                By comparing different resolutions and AA versions, maybe this has provided some useful info.