My images are blurry when I export a PDF!

[saddlemeyer]

Using Quark 7.2

I'm designing a "brochure" intended for online distribution only (in other words -- 72 DPI). Everything is fine and dandy except for the imported raster images. They're screenshots, and I don't understand why they don't show up crisp in the PDF. Do I need to somehow designate the entire project as 72 DPI? I tried downsampling them in the PDF options menu to 72 (I believe they were 96 or something), and while it seemed to help, the results are still unacceptable. I have a feeling there's some kind of PDF option or settings contradiction, but in reality I'm completely lost and confused.

Please help!

Also -- I'm having trouble uploading an image to this posting. Any it's just not appearing. Any help on this as well?

In the meantime, here are links to a couple of screenshots detailing my woes:

http://img141.imageshack.us/my.php?image=blurrypdf.jpg

http://img24.imageshack.us/my.php?image=blurrypdf2.jpg

Thanks!

 

[saddlemeyer]

So, I seem to have figured this out. I'd applied drop shadows to the picture boxes in question, and it finally occurred to me to check their resolution via the transparency option in the PDF options menu. Sure enough, the drop shadows were being exported at 150 DPI while the image in the containing picture box was being downsampled to 72 DPI.

I changed the drop shadow resolution to 72 DPI and shazaam -- perfect PDF!

But if anybody's reading this, could I get an explanation? Does the resolution of a drop shadow automatically apply to the containing image? I'm happy to have fixed it, but know I want to UNDERSTAND it

Thanks!

 

[eugenetyson]

The PDF uses a transparency flattener. Anything that has sort of transparency, i.e, drop shadows, opacity drop, bevel and emboss will be flattened in the PDF. There are 3 settings, low, medium and high resolution. If the pdf is flattened using the High then the image that is transparent, for whatever reason, will be upsampled to the High resolution. Resulting in fuzzy images.

Trick is to use the Transparency setting.

http://www.doozler.blogspot.com/