How can I tell what setting was used to create a received PDF?

[Alan_Leitstein@adobeforums.com]

I get PDFs all the time and I can't find a way of knowing if the PDF was created using Press Quality, Standard, Smallest File size other than just looking at it and zooming in.

Is there a menu item or trick that will tell me how this PDF was created?

[Michael Kazlow]

No. Sometimes people will use a setting that will include the joboptions
setting file, but not usually.

Mike

[Jon Bessant]

Use preflight to check content - don't worry about the setting used to
create the file ...

Jon

[Alan_Leitstein@adobeforums.com]

I tried to use Preflight in Acrobat but it seems to not read correctly. I made a press quality PDF of a 300 dpi picture and it still does not tell me that the image is 300ppi. It actually told me that the image is 100.103 ppi.

It also told me a gazillion other things so thanks for the preflight suggestion.

[Laura_M.@adobeforums.com]

Hmm. Regarding the reporting of the image resolution by Preflight; it should give you the effective resolution. Was the image resized by any chance?

[Alan_Leitstein@adobeforums.com]

The image was almost 9 inches by 7 inches at 300 ppi and I reduced it to about 3 inches wide in my document. I almost never blow-up images unless they can take it without losing resolution.

Maybe I'm not looking in the right place. I went to preflight > sheetfed offset, clicked on Analyze and got lots of readings. The one that said "Resolution of color and grayscale images is less than 150 ppi. This might be insufficient for proper print results." is the one that threw me.

It's too bad that I just can't read how the file was created. Most of clients I deal with make PDFs and never look at the settings they use. I'm in the printing business.

I've just been looking at the PDFs sent to me and zooming in to see if they'll hold up but I'd really like something more accurate.

[Jon Bessant]

Alan,

Preflight is what the print providers use across the globe - spend time
to study and find a profile like PDF/X-1a - duplicate, add a resolution
check and that's normally good enough for most ...

Jon

[Laura_M.@adobeforums.com]

Like Jon mentioned, Preflight is used by print providers all over (that's my background as well). The profile that you used is also fine; to finer tune it it duplicate (or create from scratch) a profile and tailor the settings to your workflow.

BUT that doesn't resolve the problem you report about the resolution. In the results, did you double click the instance(s) to see specifically what was reported as being low res? Was there flattened transparency in the file?