How Do I Get Good Quality Images That Will Also Print At Good Quality?

[i_am_jim]

For me, graphic images come out with pretty extreme jaggies. To see an example, look at the PDF and DOC files I attached to this post. The PDF was made from the DOC. The original image is high quality.

[i_am_jim]

Is it that no one has any answers, or are they waiting for approval of the expample?

Another way to answer would be for someone who's had experience with both applications to say the Adobe PDF creater does a better job with graphics than Primo

[nelsontt]

For me, graphic images come out with pretty extreme jaggies. To see an example, look at the PDF and DOC files I attached to this post. The PDF was made from the DOC. The original image is high quality.

Jim,

I'm a fairly new user, but I understand that print quality is governed by the selection you make in the Primo window of one of the following: Screen, Print, E-Book, or Pre-Press. I assume Pre-Press is the highest resolution/best quality. Screen would be the lowest, since most computer screen resolutions are only 72 dpi.

If that doesn't solve your problem, you can check something else: In the Printers and Faxes Control Panel, right-click Primo, click Properties, then graphics. I think the default setting is 600 dpi (which is fine for most high-quality print needs), but you can set it down to 72 dpi or all the way up to 4,000 dpi. The latter would likely be a very large file.

If that doesn't help, drop a note again, as there may be issues with the dpi setting of your pictures (eg., a 72 dpi picture can look very crisp and clean on a 72 dpi computer screen will look very pixelated when printed.

If it's any encouragement, I've been printing out with Primo with very pleasing results.

Good luck! :)

Trevor

[i_am_jim]

Well, I have answered the question and the answer is clear. Adobe Acrobat does a better job of converting my test graphic than PrimoPDF.

If you want to see the comparison go to the alt.binaries.comp usegroup (newsgroup) and search for PDF compare. It was posted at 7:10 pm on 1/13. There are two files attached - Doc3 and Doc3r. Doc3 was made with PrimoPDF. Doc3r was made with Adobe's Acrobat 7 Professional.

I didn't do a lot of learning and trying different options in either application but, out of the box, Acrobat did a *MUCH* better job of converting the graphic.

They both created roughly the same size file on the large document that was my purpose in doing all this.

[Feico Mol]

I ran into the same problem with poor quality images in PDFs generated by Primo. The problem turned out to be with the images that I was using in my Word document. Although the .gif and .jpg images were looking perfectly okay on screen in Word, they came out as crap in the PDF. Luckily I had access to the same images in .eps format which made all the difference.

File size of the PDF didn't really change between using gif/jpeg and eps images.

[Lance Kayashima]

As a follow-up, I took the posted .doc file, printed it from an old Word 2000 through PrimoPDF 3.0 using default settings and the resultant image was similar in quality as the original and not the poor quaility of example PDF that was posted. See attachment.

There are a number of factors that can affect the resultant PDF fidelity and quality. The original application that is rendering the document, the image resolution, PrimoPDF settings, revision level or source of Postscript driver, and ever present possibility it is PrimoPDF.

Please be sure that the resolution of the image is high enough (72 dpi is very low web graphic which yields poor results, 300 dpi provides printer quality). If you are not using the default setting, please try them first to set a baseline in printing quality. While PrimoPDF comes with an quality Postscript driver, you can also change the PS driver (like any other printer) to see if that improves your results.

We do get feedback in situations where reinstalling the same version clears the problem. Though ideally there shouldn't be a need, it does appear that something in the user environment has changed which has affected PrimoPDF. While there are a number of steps that can be taken to isolate and fix the problem, reinstalling PrimoPDF is usually faster and more sure of a fix.