Re: Graphics in PDF

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

At 09:39 AM 7/29/98 -0500, Connie Fabian-Isaacs wrote:

>We're trying to put our manuals up on our web site and we are using Acrobat
>to do it.  The trouble we're having is with our screen shots.  They look
>awful once in a PDF file.  No matter what we do, and we've spent many hours
>trying different things, we can only get the screen shots to look worse.
>Has anyone had any success getting high quality screen shots into PDF?  If
>so, how?  If this has been a discussion topic before, be patient please, I'm
>new to this list.  Thanks in advance for your help.

We produce screenshot-heavy PDFs all the time, usually from PageMaker 
source documents. 

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.
   If you're using PageMaker, it's perfectly okay to use PageMaker's 
   built-in TIFF compression at the "moderate" setting... just hold down
   the CTRL and ALT keys as you place the graphic.

-- 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 screens at 96 dpi and then downsampling produces acceptable 
(to us) results; the screenshots will be readable on your display, 
and they'll print beautifully.

Hope this helps.  Best regards.
--
Barry Campbell        |   barry -at- webveranda -dot- com 
Web Architect         |    (list/personal mail) 
Summit Systems, Inc.  |   bcampbel -at- summithq -dot- com    
22 Cortlandt Street   |    (business mail)
New York, NY 10007    |   http://www.summithq.com