Unclean graphic output

[Junji_Nishihata@adobeforums.com]

Hello there,

Calling all graphic gurus, I am having difficulty with my InDesign 3.0. When placing a JPEG or even a TIFF logo in our company newsletter, the final exported PDF version of the graphic is all blurry. What's the deal? It looks crystal clear in PhotoShop, so does anyone have an idea where the image quality went to? I place the graphic as opposed to pasting it, and I do not resize it in anyway. And yet, everytime, it looks like it has runover by a truck. Surely InDesign is better than this?

Thanks in advance,
Junji

[Jens Schulze]

Please tell us the dimensions and resolution of the graphics, and the
resolution and settings you are using to export the PDF file, so we can
better redo your problem.

Jens

[Junji_Nishihata@adobeforums.com]

Thank you Jens,

The original TIF file is 516 X 306 pixels, at 104.724 pixels per cm. Output settings for InDesign are as follows: Bicubic Downsampling set to 150 dpi for images over 225, Compress Text and Line Art deselected. As my final destination for the newsletter is PDF distribution, I am interested in keeping file sizes small(er). Nevertheless, I do not understand why the TIF resolves so poorly, when photos and other graphics are more than acceptable. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Best regards,
Junji

[Jens Schulze]

What have you selected as compress and quality settings in the used PDF
export format?

Jens

[Bob_Levine]

Have you scaled the image at all in ID? Select the graphic and then open
the info palette. What does the info palette say about the graphic.

Bob

[Bryce_Steiner@adobeforums.com]

The Bicubic Downlsampling is low. Change your PDF output settings to "press" and try again. You may want to consider using a vector EPS of the logo. This would make your image very crisp and file size rather small.

[Scott_Falkner@adobeforums.com]

Note that the image is being downsampled from 266 ppi to 150 (if imported at 100%).

[Jens Schulze]

Even downsampling to 144 dpi will look fine for screenresolution on a
monitor even with 200% zoom, if you have maximum quality selected, so I
guess the quality settings are the problems.

Jens

[Junji_Nishihata@adobeforums.com]

Hello everyone,

Thanks for the input. I have not altered the image in ID at all, but I will try the EPS conversion as Mr. Steiner recommended. Any suggestions for settings for that operation? However, because I want to keep the file size down, using the PDF Press option is not an ideal solution as the other photos and graphics will likely push the file size over target, without appreciably improving the quality (at least for screen viewing).

I will let you know how things turn out and in the meantime offer my sincere thanks for your tips.

Cheers,
Junji Nishihata

[Junji_Nishihata@adobeforums.com]

Hello,

Me again. I have just tried saving the graphic in PhotoShop as an EPS and then exported the file. By the way, I am using JPEG compression with Image Quality set to maximum. Again, results are less than satisfactory. There is a lot of fuzziness on the edges and the text of the logo is also not well rendered. This is perplexing. Or is this a photoshop question?

Cheers,
Junji Nishihata

[Lisa_Spike@adobeforums.com]

Junji,

Where are you looking at the PDFs? Acrobat? Acrobat Reader?

Try changing "smoothing" options in preferences. This happened to me last week, I was looking at a PDF I made and the graphics looked horrible. I checked "smooth line art" and they then looked beautiful.

May not be your problem, but worth a shot...

Lisa

[Bob_Levine]

Try saving the Photoshop image as a Photoshop PDF.

Bob