I can’t seem to figure out what I’m doing wrong. When I do a "save as" pdf from photoshop it works fine. When I try to print to distiller it comes out the wrong size. What settings should be checked/set so that printing to distiller produces the same result as using the save as command?
What settings should be checked/set so that printing to distiller produces the same result as using the save as command?
Other than for academic "jollies", there’s no reason to try and achieve the same results from distiller, as you do from Save As PDF.
The point of Distiller is to try and achieve a more fine tuned approach to the compression: I want graphics handled this way, text handled that way; I want grayscale handled this way, bitmap that way, color, yet another way. I want this color profile embedded, etc. I want to preserve this characteristic or that characteristic because the file is going to a print service that requires "X".
That’s a long winded way to ask: Why are you trying to print to distiller in the first place? In most cases, you fine tune distiller to give you exactly what you want, with more control over compression and font substitution.
Save As PDF, allows far less control, but is good for general purposes.
Yeah, well, rather than get into a long winded dissertation on the uses of Distiller, I just tried to "overview" it. I print to distiller often, but not usually from within photoshop. I’d rather provide a print service with a Tiff, and let them prepare it as they like. But for other apps, I print to disitller. <shrug>.
Maybe some background is in order. I created some pages in PS and I’m now going to have them printed. In PS they are 25"x13" @ 300dpi. Like I said before the pdf looks fine if done via the save as command. When I print to distiller, even though I change the page size to match the 25×13 original it tells me the document size is larger than the printer’s printable area. The resulting pdf looks like a blow up of the center 8"x10" area of the original document. The really odd part is when I cropped the document to 8×10 and tried it again it still said the document was too large and it looked bad. It may be academic if the save as files work well but I’d really like to know exactly what I’m doing wrong.
I just played with it. It’s a distiller issue. You do this: File|Print with Preview. Click on Page Setup, then click on Printer. You should have Distiller already highlighted. You choose Properties, and define a custom page size of 25 x 13. You’ll notice several different default page sizes, towards the right are some Custom ones. You change those.
This is done from Distiller properties, as well as the Job Options in Distiller.
Then you wont’ get the page size error, and you’ll see the Position from the Print with Preview dialog is at 0 hieght and 0 Width, meaning it’s centered and will print to the entire 25 x 13 page.
Thank you, that worked. I was doing it slightly differently. I was changing the page size in the conversion settings under Adobe PDF Settings and it somehow wasn’t really applying the changes even though the numbers showed correctly. I’m still not sure why my way didn’t work but your way works perfectly. I’ll accept that as being academic though. 🙂 Thanks again.
