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Subject:RE: PDFs vs. Word for crispness From:Fred Ridder <docudoc -at- hotmail -dot- com> To:"Cardimon, Craig" <ccardimon -at- m-s-g -dot- com>, Techwr-l <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:21:33 -0400
Craig (ccardimon -at- M-S-G -dot- com) asked:
> Any idea why a PDF would NOT be as clear as the Word doc from which
> was generated?
Certainly. Acrobat uses a font smoothing algorithm that strives to present
all fonts as closely as possible to the way the type designer intended. To
do this on a low-res device (like a monitor) it uses gray pixels where an
accurately rendered glyph occupies only a portion of the pixel's area.
The net result is text that looks "soft" because it's not just black pixels.
If you don't like the softening, go to Edit>Preferences, choose the
Page Display category, then de-select the "Smooth text" option.
And note that this is strictly a display issue. When you print the PDF,
the text should be every bit as crisp as it is from whatever app
originated the source document.
Fred Ridder
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