Image resolution

[Chris]

Hello;

Here's the scenario. I create an image in Photoshop at 360 ppi. When I
place it into MSWord, it resamples to 300 ppi.I provide the MSWord doc
to a client to use on her WinOS machine. When she inputs the text and
converts the file to PDF, the image resamples to 150 ppi.

The resulting output from the commercial printer is pretty fuzzy
needless to say.

Any help is much appreciated.

Chris

 

[Elliott Roper]

Hello;

Here's the scenario. I create an image in Photoshop at 360 ppi. When I
place it into MSWord, it resamples to 300 ppi.I provide the MSWord doc
to a client to use on her WinOS machine. When she inputs the text and
converts the file to PDF, the image resamples to 150 ppi.

The resulting output from the commercial printer is pretty fuzzy
needless to say.

Any help is much appreciated.

That's about what you would expect. Photoshop and Word are not the
ideal vehicles for transporting raster images cross platform.

You would be better off sending the art as separate referenced images.
I dunno how you do that with Photoshop. I'm a masochist, but not a
suicidal masochist. As you have observed, Word maxes out rasters at 300
dpi.
The right way to go about it is to ask the printer how to supply the
art. Expect them to say 600 dpi tiff for raster art, and eps for line
art. Hand the image in the printer's preferred format, resolution and
colour profile to your client, and ask her to pass it on to the
printer.

I don't know what to suggest for your client's problem where the pixels
per picture drops by another factor of four. I can't believe Word on
the PC side can't print to PDF at better than 150dpi.

If the printer is expecting a PDF workflow, she may have to use a
different product from Word to produce the copy for the printer to meet
his quality requirements.
My choice would be InDesign. But I have seen printers whose workflow
can't eat PDF produced by InDesign, so ask about that too. In fact I'm
starting a job tomorrow where the printer uses Corel-mumble something.
Last year the job almost fell apart because their PC would not eat the
PDF or the InDesign I structured the book with. A neigboring printer
stepped in to make the plates for them from my InDesign files. Not what
you need with deadlines whooshing by in Best Douglas Adams style.

 

[Chris]

Thanks ER and CT;

The 300 ppi max in Word info is good to know; that we can work with.
The client is not in a position to use a new program although I
advised her from the beginning that she needs a dtp or page layout not
a word processing program to do what she wants. Having said that, we
are working with what she has.

She does have Acrobat Distiller, and I advised her to change the
resolution settings therein, but that did not seem to work. She is not
an advanced user, so her PDF conversion workflow wouuld probably be
the default MSWord method.

So, the remaining issue now is the resolution of the image in the pdf.
Any more thoughts?

Thanks;
Chris

 

[Elliott Roper]

Thanks ER and CT;

The 300 ppi max in Word info is good to know; that we can work with.
The client is not in a position to use a new program although I
advised her from the beginning that she needs a dtp or page layout not
a word processing program to do what she wants. Having said that, we
are working with what she has.

She does have Acrobat Distiller, and I advised her to change the
resolution settings therein, but that did not seem to work. She is not
an advanced user, so her PDF conversion workflow wouuld probably be
the default MSWord method.

So, the remaining issue now is the resolution of the image in the pdf.
Any more thoughts?

Make sure her Word does not resize the picture. That often tricks Word
into down-resing on Mac. I dunno if the PC is as fussy.
Distiller should cope beautifully with whatever it is given (for small
values of beautifully - it *is* painful to use is it not?) I'd bet that
it is already wrecked before Distiller sees it.

So make your picture 300 dpi and the exact right size in Photoshop
before inserting it into Word. Resist the temptation to drag a corner
once you have placed it in Word. Since you are using Photoshop, save
the image as a tiff. Tiff has a better chance of being treated well by
both versions of Word. PNG is not bad either, but avoid anything else,
as one Word or the other will turn its nose up at Jpg, gif, wmf, and
most flavours of eps. (eps is best for vector art, but it is painful
getting compatible flavours with acceptable on-screen previews.)

This is a wild guess, but make sure your and her copy have generous
margins. Her printer driver might try to squash the page and trick her
Word into resizing the picture. (Note I'm backing a double on wild
guesses here, test test and try things till the PDF comes out lovely.

If Acrobat likes it, the print shop will like it. Blow up the final
copy till you can count the pixels in the picture before sending it
off.

 

[Chris]

Here's a fuller picture of what I'm doing. The image is the full page
(8.5" x 11") with text on top. There is no issue with its placement or
resizing. I define the paragraph styles and layout and provide the
client with the MSWord file. She then uses this as a template as
required for announcements by inputting the appropriate text.

Since the image fills the page, I supply it as a jpeg to make the size
manageble. This doesn't seem to be an issue, or have I just been
lucky?

When the client sends me her finalized MSWord and PDF files to check,
it all looks good. It's just the resolution of the PDF image is
reduced.

We have narrowed the problem down to her settings in Acrobat Distiller
which we have changed from 150 ppi to 300 ppi in the appropriate
fields. She saved, restarted and tried again, to no avail; still 150
ppi. Have we missed a step?

Since the client is on a PC, I'm at a bit of a loss to help her.

Chris

 

[Elliott Roper]

Here's a fuller picture of what I'm doing. The image is the full page
(8.5" x 11") with text on top. There is no issue with its placement or
resizing. I define the paragraph styles and layout and provide the
client with the MSWord file. She then uses this as a template as
required for announcements by inputting the appropriate text.

I assume you are using US letter. Unless you have the margins set to
zero and you both have a printer that prints right to the edge, you
almost certainly have resizing.
You are using the image as a watermark? Or have you placed it in the
header? I might be missing something. Is it a picture of a form to fill
in?

Since the image fills the page, I supply it as a jpeg to make the size
manageble. This doesn't seem to be an issue, or have I just been
lucky?

Lucky I guess. One of the regulars here says Word on the Windows side
is not too clever with jpgs.

When the client sends me her finalized MSWord and PDF files to check,
it all looks good. It's just the resolution of the PDF image is
reduced.

And how good does the image look in Word when it comes back from the
client? I'm deeply suspicious of Word's graphics handling. I also
suspect some trickery. Word may well hold the original as well as a
resized version of the image. It might even cough out the resized one
on the PC then come back and display the good one to you.

Another trick: You can make is to create a PDF on the Mac, either with
Distiller or Preview. Then compare. Do you know the colorsync utility
trick for setting the res of pdfs in Preview? (Mac only of course)

We have narrowed the problem down to her settings in Acrobat Distiller
which we have changed from 150 ppi to 300 ppi in the appropriate
fields. She saved, restarted and tried again, to no avail; still 150
ppi. Have we missed a step?

Like I said before, Distiller is evil, but it does what it is told.

Since the client is on a PC, I'm at a bit of a loss to help her.

When said regular gets back to Sydney from Redmond, he'll probably beat
me round the head and ears and then give you good advice. Stay tuned.

 

[Chris]

Here is an update. This solution was provided on the Adobe Acrobat
forum.

On MacOS: Print> Adobe PDF> PDF Options> PDF Settings> select the
preset required

On WinOS: Print> Adobe PDF>/ Properties> Adobe PDF Settings> select
the preset required

Thank you all for your help.

 

[Elliott Roper]

Here is an update. This solution was provided on the Adobe Acrobat
forum.

On MacOS: Print> Adobe PDF> PDF Options> PDF Settings> select the
preset required

On WinOS: Print> Adobe PDF>/ Properties> Adobe PDF Settings> select
the preset required

Ripper!
I'm using Preview.app whenever I can, so I missed giving you the proper
advice.
What was Adobe PDF options preset to by default? It would be good to be
forewarned.

 

[Chris]

Hello Elliott;

For my client on her PC, I think it would have been Standard which is
150 / 150 / 300 ppi for Color / Grayscale / Monotone.

For me, I must have changed it before without remembering because it
was set to one of my customized settings. Otherwise I would suspect
that it too would have been standard.

Regards;
Chris