Acrobat 8 PDFs show lines around images

[growland@adobeforums.com]

Using Acobat 8 on G5 10.4.8 when making the PDF out of Indesign there appears lines outlining the object boxes of the art when I flatten using the flatttener. The PDF optimizer creates the same "outlines" These lines do not print but I can't send the files out to clients as it appears on screen to print. Can anyone help with eliminating these lines or have an idea what it is. This did not happen in Acrobat 7 and only started when I upgraded to 8. Thanks in advance.

[peter kleinheider]

Hi grownland

What you see is the anti aliasing of the flattened objects when rendering the PDF to be viewed on the screen. You can check this by disabling the anti-alias feature in the preferences for viewing PDF pages.

rgds

Peter

[Leonard_Rosenthol@adobeforums.com]

AND don't use the flattener!

Unless you are creating PDF/X-compliant PDFs, you should NOT be flattening the transparency! Keep it live in the PDF.

Leonard

[Laura_Belgrave@adobeforums.com]

Does your PDF look good in Preview? My experience is that PDFs, no matter what program was used to create them, look good in Preview and PDFView, but not very good in Reader 8. Mostly it’s in the in line art.

Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would say . . .

[Jon Bessant]

Just to clarify Peter's great advice - turn OFF the option for SMOOTH
LINE ART ...

Check to see if your print provider can accept PDFs with live
transparency - you will then be able to EXPORT as PDF 1.4 or above to
keep the transparency for processing at a device resolution only your
print provider can know ...

Acrobat 8 has support for the draft PDF/X-4 format which includes live
transparency and OCG layers ...

Jon

[Laura_Belgrave@adobeforums.com]

Jon, just to reiterate, I’m talking solely about how my PDFs appear in Acrobat READER. I do not have anything more than that.

Also, over the weekend I brought my PDF to a friend, who hasn’t updated her Mac in a while. She still had Reader 5 loaded. Guess what? The PDF in that version looked fine. And, to make sure the program from which I generated the PDF wasn’t at issue, I loaded the program on her machine -- a G4 tower running Panther -- and created a fresh PDF of my document. Again, it looked fine. But when I brought that home? Looked bad in Reader 8.

At this point, I can’t help but think Adobe has simply released a badly flawed version of Reader.

[Steve_Werner@adobeforums.com]

The Smooth Line Art preference is in Reader as well. Page Display Preferences. Turn it off.

[Barry_Ryan@adobeforums.com]

Go to preferences, page display, turn off [Display art, trim, bleed boxes]
Regards Bj.

[Jon Bessant]

Laura - would you be happy to post this PDF somewhere?

Jon

[de_Siem@adobeforums.com]

She still had Reader 5 loaded. Guess what? The PDF in that version looked fine.

Smooth line art was by default turned off in version 5. (that discussion topic does take me back a bit now)

[Laura_Belgrave@adobeforums.com]

Thank you, everybody. Unfortunately, turning off the smooth line art and other suggested preferences hasn’t made a difference.

But let me ask you something: When I look at “properties” for my document in Reader, it shows PDF Version 1.4 (Acrobat 5.x). Is that significant? And how about PDF Producer: Mac OS X 10.4.8 Quartz PDFContext. Does that mean anything to any of you? (Again, I have never used anything more than Acrobat Reader to view PDFs, so I’m quite unfamiliar with anything beyond the obvious.)

If it helps to know, I’ve examined a few other PDF documents that I didn’t generate myself. For instance, I have a “Take Control” PDF and in properties for that it shows PDF Version 1.6 (Acrobat 7.x), and PDF Producer as Acrobat Distiller 6.0 (Windows).

Anyway, Jon, you asked if I could upload the PDF somewhere. It’s a fat document, but I’ve put it here: <http://www.laurabelgrave.com/brochure.html>

The document is a 2-page tri-fold brochure. Page 2 looks pretty good, but Page 1 -- with the Vitruvian Man symbol at the lower right -- is lousy in my Reader 8, though good in Preview. Fonts in Reader also don’t look quite right, and the color is murkier, both in appearance and when I print to my little inkjet.

I really do appreciate everyone’s help with this.

[Jon Bessant]

Laura,

Appreciate the file upload - can someone else test/verify page content,
getting an I/O error across here from London on a 3G card?

I think the file is corrupt?

Jon

[Larry_G._Schneider@adobeforums.com]

Jon,
I tried and it downloaded here OK (San Diego, CA). I looked and the problem is with anti-aliasing along the figures in the lower right. It is an image that was made transparent instead of redrawn in AI. The square is not square and the circle is not round. There are white pixels (or almost white) from the anti-aliasing which on the colored background are coming through as lines.

Larry

[Doug_Katz@adobeforums.com]

OT: Larry, you're in San Diego? We've just moved here a few months ago from Washington, DC. Are you in the city proper?

[Larry_G._Schneider@adobeforums.com]

Yes, I work by the airport and live in Clairemont (above Mission Bay). My email is under my name.

[David Creamer]

I'm coming into this late, but I saw the San Diego reference (I'm in San Diego county)...

Turning off Smooth Line Art will also make any vector art look poor.
For a client proof, I would go back to the second reply from Leonard: don't flatten.
As long as one has Reader 5 or higher, it is not necessary for a proof.

[Jon Bessant]

I suggest you making the PDF directly from InDesign - File/Export/(Adobe
PDF)

Otherwise we're talking about an Apple PDF file and how it fairs under
Adobe Reader - which I feel is pretty pointless to be honest ... It is
much better to use the Adobe PDF Library from InDesign to create the
PDF, albeit for proof or print ...

Cheers!

Jon

[Jon Bessant]

by the way - Hi Dave, hope you're well since our last meeting?

J.