RE: Dumb de dumb dumb

["Brierley, Sean" <Sean -at- Quodata -dot- Com>]

To follow up on Bill's comments:

1) You need the correct printer. Go to www.adobe.com and download the
Distiller PPD (part of the Adobe PPD zip, I think). Unzip this.

2) Go back to Adobe.com and get the latest Adobe PS for your OS and version
of Acrobat. For Acrobat 3, I don't know off the top of my head which this
is, probably 4.2.6 or something, but it is probably not the latest
"Universal Installer."

3) Install the Adobe PS printer by double-clicking it and select the
Distiller PPD (adistill.ppd or something) when prompted. Usually, the
default selection is the "generic" PPD, you do not want this one.

4) Set the printer up to print from file, binary, and PostScript for speed,
yes speed, not portability.

5) Upgrade version 3 of Acrobat to 3.02 Distiller and 3.01 RA Exchange.
These are also available from adobe.com.

6) Open Adobe Distiller. On the first page, set the resolution to match your
output device, say 600 dpi. In Job Options, turn off any downsampling for
greyscale and color images. Set downsampling to 300 dpi for monochrome. Use
ZIP compression for greyscale and color images, this is loss-less. Use CCITT
Group 4, or some such thing, for monochrome images. You can use text
compression.

7) Of course, all of the above is crap if the images you use are crap.
Resize and edit the images outside of FrameMaker or Word. Make sure the
images you choose to use meet your need, such as 96 dpi for on-screen only
viewing, or 120-150 dpi for output to a 600 dpi laser printer, etc. If you
use Windows and output to an offset press using a CMYK process, the Windows
GDI will interfere with your color conversion, so use EPS files which are
unaffected by the Windows GDI. If you output only to screen, keep the images
RGB and color accuracy probably matters little, use PNG, BMP, or some such.
If you need to move the source files between OSes, use EPS and TIFF. Etc.

Cheers,

Sean
sean -at- quodata -dot- com

> ----Original Message-----
> From:	Swallow, William [SMTP:WSwallow -at- courion -dot- com]
> OK, OK... enough trolling for trouble. But in all serious and in all
> topic-relatedness (if there is such a term), it *is* possible to get good
> FM
> -> PDF results just as it *is* possible to get good Word -> PDF results.
> It's all in *how* you create the PDF. Any experienced Framer will tell you
> that Save As PDF from Frame is baaad. Instead, and this goes for any true
> publishing, you need to print to postscript. Then, when you have an
> in-tact
> PS file, you can Distill it. But be sure to use the correct settings!
> There
> are two graphics compression utilities in Distiller: JPG and Zip. JPG by
> nature is lossy - no way around it. It's best reserved for vivid-color
> images. But if your color use lies within the 256 color range, Zip will
> give
> you much better results without much loss at all (though compression
> doesn't
> have nearly the potential of JPG).

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