PDF file looks fine but prints fuzzy

JP
Posted By
JP_Phillips
Sep 22, 2008
Views
674
Replies
7
Status
Closed
Hi, I am making music books for a publishing company and we are having an issue with some PDF’s. To let you know what we are dealing with I will provide you with some critical info.

I recieve 600 DPI scans as PDF’s of books with music in them from our production crew. I take these files and I have to edit the layout of music on the last page so that there is room for our barcode. I insert the barcode and resave the file as a flattened 600 DPI PDF again. Then in Acrobat, I replace the old page, with the new page containing the barcode. The new page looks fine on screen, but when printed out it looks very fuzzy.

I have noticed that this also happens to our barcodes when importing pictures into Quark. I have tried saving the barcodes out as TIFF’s and as GIF’s (they are high contrast black and white, so GIF’s have good quality and very low file size)at 600 DPI. Then we export PDF’s from Quark and get the same problem with the fuzzyness.

Does photoshop have some settings for PDF’s that will fix this? I am not even sure why it is doing this in the first place. I appologize for the long explanation but would rather have it be clear the first time. Any help you guys can give me would be great!

-JP
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JJ
Jim_Jordan
Sep 22, 2008
You want to remain in bitmap mode if you must use Photoshop for this. Some may prefer to avoid Photoshop for this.
JP
JP_Phillips
Sep 22, 2008
Well the PDF files are imported into photoshop as CMYK files, it does not give me the option to do them as bitmap, if I try to convert them into bitmap then they look much worse on screen.

I thought photoshop would be the best way to edit the scans. What would you suggest?
JJ
Jim_Jordan
Sep 22, 2008
Well the PDF files are imported into photoshop as CMYK files

If you absolutely must open these in Photoshop, look at the ‘Import PDF’ dialog and check the ‘Images’ radio button instead of the ‘Pages’ radio button. This will load the image in the original 1-bit form. If you choose ‘Pages’, Photoshop will convert the file. This takes time to render and introduces the fuzziness you want to avoid.

I’d revisit and examine the settings you have in QuarkXPress. You should be able to place the 1-bit scanned PDF file in QuarkXPress, overlay your bar code, and then export a new PDF file with the right resolution. Avoid the PDF presets in QuarkXPress and verify every setting.
JP
JP_Phillips
Sep 23, 2008
Okay thanks for the input, but when i try to import with images, instead of pages, it says there was a program error and it fails to import. Unfortunately I have to do these in photosjop first, because like I said in the first message, i have to edit the music on the page so that the barcode will fit.

The page is FULL of music, and we cannot simply shrink because that makes it harder for people to read the smaller notes. So I have to move the measures closer together, and sometimes I have to cut out extra space in the measures. If I were to do this in quark I would need to set up several different image boxes and then make sure they would line up properly. It is not very time effecient because I do dozens of these each day.

I have been playing around with the downsampling options and I am getting better results with that. I will post any progress I happen to find.
JJ
Jim_Jordan
Sep 23, 2008
Photoshop chokes on some TIFF variants which may be found in the PDF file. This may be the reason for the import error. You might look at using Acrobat to save out a TIFF file of the page you need to edit, open in Photoshop, edit, resave.

If you ‘Import PDF’ through Photoshop as a ‘Page’ and not an ‘Image’, be sure that ‘anti-aliased’ is unchecked, mode is grayscale, and resolution is identical to the resolution of the PDF file. Do your edits and then convert to bitmap mode prior to saving.
JP
JP_Phillips
Sep 23, 2008
OK that could help because I was reading about anti-aliasing, so I have it checked because it said it fixes something but I will check that out thanks.
JP
JP_Phillips
Sep 23, 2008
Okay apparently some setting in the pdf save screen fixed it for me, either in the compression / downsampling, or the transparency options, I just set everything to 600 DPI opposed to 300. I assumed 300 would have been enough but I guess it wasn’t.

Thanks for the helpful advice though Jim, I will keep an eye on that anti-aliasing thing and import all BW stuff as grayscale not CMYK.

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