Screenshot image quality degradation in exported PDF 1

[kentara]

I have an InDesign file with numerous, detailed screenshot images placed in it. When I export to PDF, however, these screenshot images are of poor visible screen quality (illegible) at 100% display in Adobe Reader. Is there any way I can enhance the screen quality of these for the PDF file?

Details:
In the InDesign document, these screenshot images are RGB Bitmap files. I proportionally sized down all of these screenshot images in InDesign so as to preserve fine detail for printed versions of the document. The document prints beautifully from InDesign, however, I really need the document to be legible and easily viewed on screen as well.

In export to PDF options, I selected Acrobat 6.0 compatibility, unchecked the box for optimize for fast web view, chose not to downsample any images, and I left all color unchanged. I have experimented with varying compression options and tried the default Screen export setting, but the results were similar in every case.

Is there something I'm missing? Any assistance or ideas would be greatly appreciated

 

[sarcazmo]

Hi. I'm well familiar with this. Save your images as pdf files (or wmf files) and then do a file > place. In Design does NOT support OLE objects. But when an individual file is PDF'd and then placed, the transfer is beautiful.

View them - at least more clearly - by going to Edit > Preferences > Display Performance > Default View > High Quality.

Good luck!

Sarcazmo

 

[Eggles]

sarcazmo

>>Save your images as pdf files (or wmf files)<<

I am a bit surprised you have recommended in a couple of posts to use WMF files. In my experience, these do not usually translate well to PDF format as they are not particularly postscript-compatible.

kentara

>>screenshot images are of poor visible screen quality (illegible) at 100% display in Adobe Reader.<<

I have no experience using screenshots in ID, but have done so quite often into Pagemaker. My experience was that, against all the rules, pasting the screenshot directly into PM after capture, and then resizing them smaller, I got great clarity in PDFs subsequently created. In other words, I didn't go via Photoshop. (You haven't mentioned the method you use for getting the screenshots into ID). Are your screenshots of the whole screen or part of the screenshot, such as a dialog box? You probably already know this, but holding down the Alt key when you hit the PrintScreen button just captures the dialog box.

Could be worth a try.

 

[kentara]

Sarcazmo,

I tried saving the screenshots as PDFs and then placed those in ID, but the result after exporting the ID document to PDF was the same (illegible screenshots at 100% view in Adobe Reader).

Eggles,

Unfortunately, most of the screenshots were taken on a separate special workstation that I am unable to use for development, so pasting directly from capture isn't an option available to me. I have also been removing/adding on text layers to screenshots in Photoshop before saving them as Bitmaps to import into ID. Most screenshots are just part of the screen. Thanks for the shortcut reminder (Alt+PrintScreen), I had forgotten how handy that can be!!

As for the original issue, I'm still not certain what to try next. It seems like the only fix may be to do an entirely separate version of the ID document with screenshots pre-sized down in Photoshop then placed at 100% size in ID (then call that the screen version document). That's a hefty amount of work for a 40 page document, though!

Thank you both for your ideas

 

[Eggles]

>>so pasting directly from capture isn't an option<<

So how are the screenshots being saved on the computer that takes them (TIF? JPG? GIF?) and in what program? before being transferred to your computer?

If you are adding text to the screenshots, why do it in Photoshop? Why not add the text in ID after placing the images there? You will get much better clarity on the text.

 

[jmgalvin]

You might try saving as TIFF from photoshop, or full quality jpeg. Both are the most forgiving formats for both screen and print. My vote is Tiff if you're going to professional print. Since you're going to print with this, you'll probably want at least 300 dpi, although text is usally best at 600 and up.

Don't mess around much with the PDf export setting in ID. If you select the default Press, it will work fine. If you're going to professional print, you might want to disable Optimize for fast Web preview. If you need a pdf for screen viewing, just export another pdf using the Screen preset.

If possible, you really should try to put in any text in ID instead of Photoshop. The quality wil be FAR better.

 

[jimoblak]

Is Reader set to smooth images in the preferences?

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?

 

[kentara]

Eggles,

The screenshots were saved on the computer they were taken on by pasting the clipboard capture into Windows Paint and saving as a Bitmap file. The Bitmap file was copied over to the development computer and used in ID.

The added text isn't so much an issue - as you say, I can replace this with ID text when necessary. The tricky part is the distortion on text that is part of the screenshot itself... which of course isn't vector-based.

JMGalvin,

I tried saving a screenshot as a TIFF, and then as a full-size JPEG, but then had the same problem (after the Screen export to PDF).

I have a screenshot of a dialog box that is 417 x 241 pixels (or 5.792 x 3.347 inches). I save this as a Bitmap (or TIFF) and place it in ID, then size it down to 2.8965in x 1.674 in (proportional). While viewing this at 100% in ID, the details of the image (such as screenshot text) look distorted and illegible, but zooming in and printing reveal fine, perfect detail. Likewise, after exporting to PDF, the detail is fine at anything greater than 160% zoom, but I am trying to find a way to preserve the detail for printing while offering viewers legible screenshots at 100% standard view.

I might be going about this the wrong way, though. Maybe it is more "standard" for viewers to read documents while zoomed in in Adobe Reader?

Jimoblak,

Yes, Adobe Reader is set to smooth images in the preferences. Still no dice - the screenshots are blurry at any view magnification below 160%.

Thanks all again for your help - it's great to have a community to brainstorm/troubleshoot together in...

If you can't think of any other ideas as to this issue, maybe you'll have some idea about this - I have read similar posts on this in this forum, but the effect was a bit different:

* When printing PDF versions of an ID document, all graphics (whether they originally had transparency or not) are overlaid with a faint field of gray dots. That is, fine, light gray dots overlap the entire space of the image, even in places where that image is supposed to be white. These images are all either Bitmap or EPS images, to preserve print quality detail of screenshots and images with added (vector) text, respectively.

Cheers,
kentara

 

[jmgalvin]

How is your ID view setting? Try view menu/Display performance/high quality.

What is the original resolution of the screen shot? Neither .BMP (unless very simple) or .EPS is the greatest for screen display. You might also try sizing down in Photoshop at a MINIMUM of 600 dpi, 1800 would be better. When you pdf the thing, Acrobat downsampling will reduce the dpi, but should retain the quality.

If you're looking at this on a flat panel display or notebook, you might try enabling Cooltype in Acrobat smoothing prefs.

When exporting anything with transparency, make sure that Transparency Flattener is set to High under Advanced tab in the pdf export window.

If the pdf is going to be viewed by others, it's handy to save as compatible with V4, because a lot of people do not download upgrades. AS long as there is no transparency, it's usually ok.

 

[Eggles]

>>The screenshots were saved on the computer they were taken on by pasting the clipboard capture into Windows Paint and saving as a Bitmap file. The Bitmap file was copied over to the development computer and used in ID.<<

and

>>I have a screenshot of a dialog box that is 417 x 241 pixels (or 5.792 x 3.347 inches). I save this as a Bitmap (or TIFF) and place it in ID, then size it down to 2.8965in x 1.674 in (proportional)<<

Let's assume the original screenshot is 72 dpi (which it will be close to, but perhaps not exactly, as this is the typical resolution of the monitor). Resolution and size are inversely proportional. So if you are halving the size of the image in ID, it becomes 144 dpi. This will look great onscreen even at 200%, but once printed, will be almost illegible because text in particular, because of its small size, is likely to be blurry because there are so few pixels actually in each letter, so they look very rough/pixelated. Resolution of text needs to be much higher than 144 dpi so that it is legible when printed. I wouldn't worry about viewers having to zoom in to 160% or more in Reader to read the text - I often have to do this with onscreen PDFs.

As Jim has suggested, the TIF format is best for both viewing and printing, but if the pixels aren't there, they aren't there. The EPS format, while it is OK once you have created a PDF, is not the best for screen viewing, because what you actually see is just the low-rez preview that is saved when the EPS created (and is what is printed on a non-postscript printer). Only a postscript printer can print an EPS at full resolution. But this is irrelevant if you are making a PDF first before printing, as this allows non-ps printers to print EPSs.

There are a couple more suggestions I can make: Add all text in ID - including that which is in the original screenshot itself (or at least the important bits). This means you will need access to an image editing program like Photoshop, which can remove the text pixels from the image so you can add it later in ID. OR, in ID, create coloured (white) boxes over the existing text and then add your own on top.

The other thing to try is to reset the display settings of your monitor as high as it will go before taking the screenshots. My gut feeling is that this will increase the resolution of the screenshots and may allow you to resize them in ID even smaller, which will have the effect of upping the resolution. I could be wrong on this

 

[kentara]

My ID view setting is set at high quality. I also tried enabling Cooltype (as I use a notebook as my development machine), but most of the users viewing this document won't have flat panel or notebook screens.

The original resolution of the Bitmap screenshot is indeed 72dpi, but as Eggles says, the pixels just aren't there to have a higher resolution. In the case of this document, I found that halving the size of the BMP screenshot in ID made the image illegible on screen in ID unless viewed at 300% or greater magnification, but that it printed pretty crisply and legibly. I wonder why? Do you think this is because screen res can't support displaying higher dpi's while good laserjet printers can? I won't worry too much about viewers having to zoom in to 160% or greater on screen, I think. It's more important that the printouts are crisp and very legible.

I may call it quits on this document and try putting every image in TIFF format in the next one, then add additional text on in ID, not Photoshop, as you all suggest. At a high magnification view in ID/Reader and in print-outs, I can definitely tell that the EPS files aren't as crisp and detailed as they could be, so I'll avoid that format here on out.

Besides resetting the monitor display, can you think of any other tricks that might help preserve the initial dpi of screenshots on capture?

Thanks!!

 

[jmgalvin]

Here's what I'd do. Take the screenshot and get it into Photoshop, bypassing any other apps if possible. Go to Image menu/image size. On Resolution go up to 1200. PS will introduce interpolation at that point - sort of filling in blank spots. Then reduce the physical dimension of the pic - using the print size part of the window. At this point you can experiment by goint to Filter menu/Sharpen. Only do it once. You can also Sharpen Edges rather than plain sharpen. Then save as tiff.

I actully have to do stunts like this all the time because clients send in all sorts of badly done stuff that I have to get to output on a press.

Stick that into ID. You might want to experiment by just sticking a few of these into ID and exporting a pdf to see how it looks - using one of the stock settings. See how it looks.

When working with pics, you usually do best by doing as much tweeking as possible in an image editing app. When using text, lines, boxes etc, you're usually best doint as much as possible in the page design app.

 

[Eggles]

>>Do you think this is because screen res can't support displaying higher dpi's while good laserjet printers can? <<

Absolutely.

 

[kentara]

JMGalvin,

This technique worked wonderfully - I actually tried it with resolution up to 1800 (which I set in the New Document settings before pasting the screen capture into it). It also made the screenshot legible in Adobe Reader at 100-200% magnifications.

Thanks very much!

kentara

 

[oddbillie]

Another method which works with tifs is to go to ID's print dialog / graphics tab / images:send data and change it from Optimized Subsampling to All