sigh...graphics problems in PDF

["Mary Reynolds" <mreynolds -at- visualclick -dot- com>]

I'm in a new job and inherited manuals that had screenshots in TIFF format.
They look bad in the PDFs. I've had illustrators or inherited good practices
in previous jobs.

If you are producing manuals using FrameMaker 6.0 and delivering to
customers via PDF (distilled to Acrobat 4.0), how do you make your graphics
look good online? All my graphics are screenshots. I'm capturing them with
Alt + Print Screen and opening in Photoshop Elements. I always save the .psd
file and then save as JPEG, sized to fit a 5" wide anchored frame. I import
them by reference in Frame, which automatically sets the DPI. For most
screenshots, the DPI setting is about 127.

The graphics that didn't need to be reduced look pretty good in the manual,
but the larger screens are hard to read at 100% or "fit in window" size.

I would like to avoid the situation where online readers of the manuals have
to enlarge the page to be able to clearly see the details in the
screenshots.

Any good advice? Are there settings in Distiller or Acrobat that will make a
difference? I've looked in the archives and haven't found this exact
problem.

Thanks. (Back on the list after a 3-year break.)

    *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

  m a r y   a n n   r e y n o l d s

         technical writer
        sharkfin services
(integrity and visual click software)

        512.231.9990 x607

   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *




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