Re: Converting Word files to PDF

[Barry Campbell <barry -at- WEBVERANDA -dot- COM>]

At 02:12 PM 5/7/98 -0500, Eric Thomas wrote:

>I was wondering if anyone has had any experience in converting Word 97
>files to PDF files?  I've been working with Acrobat 3.01, and for the most
>part, things work out fine.  However, my screenshots end up looking really
>jagged and losing information no matter what I do.  Does anyone know how to
>get the bmp format graphics to export to PDF via Distiller or PDFWriter
>with the same clarity as if they were printed on the actual printer from
>Word?  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

Eric,

First, I assume that you are aware of and are using PDFMaker 1.0, the 
newish (Jan 98) PDF creation tool for Word97.  If not, you can get it
from the Adobe site at 


http://www.adobe.com/supportservice/custsupport/LIBRARY/4d9e.htm

It works beautifully with Acrobat 3.01.

Now, the bitmap clarity question:

Bitmap graphics are converted to JPEGs in the export process.  We produce
screenshot-heavy PDFs all the time, usually from PageMaker source documents
but not infrequently from Word97.  

Here's our method.  I'm not claiming this is the best or most efficient 
method possible, but it works:

-- Capture screen shots as uncompressed TIFFs at 96dpi and place in doc

-- Set your Distiller job options as follows: downsample color and 
   greyscale bitmap graphics to 72dpi, Automatic JPEG compression at 
   ZIP/JPEG Medium.

Then print or export to PDF as usual.  Capturing at a slightly higher 
resolution and then downsampling produces acceptable (to us) results;
although the screenshots will still look kinda gross on your monitor,
they'll print beautifully.

Hope this helps.

--
Barry Campbell          |   Senior Technical Writer
barry -at- webveranda -dot- com    |   Summit Systems, Inc.
  (list/personal mail)  |   22 Cortlandt Street
bcampbel -at- summithq -dot- com   |   New York, NY 10007
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