Hi,
Problem number 3:
I have a book of images which are large scale Raw:JPeg images. I have the pasted into double page spreads in my book . They look fine within Aperture even viewed at full at the book full size. When I preview the book however the images look terrible. They appear in places like low resolution jpegs and seem to have 'split' into several blocky layers with little definition. I have downloaded all system and program updates, repaired permissions etc. Cannot seem to find any solution for this. Any suggestions welcome.
Thanks
keef
Joseph,
I’m confident of the dimensions Photoshop reported using the Image Size command after the file was open. Here’s why.
When you open a PDF file in Photoshop, you’re asked to select whether to import “Pages” or “Images”. If you select Pages, Photoshop rasterizes the entire page using the settings you specify in the dialog on the right.
When you select “Images”, the options on the right are dimmed for setting the size. Photoshop brings in the actual image in its original size.
In the case of the Aperture book I tried, I selected “Images”. There was only 1 image because I had only printed to PDF the first page of the book from Aperture.
To confirm this, I tried opening a complex photo book that I originally created in Apple’s Pages app. It had more than two hundred images. The Pages document was originally saved as a PDF file in order to have Lulu.com print it for me. When I opened this PDF in Photoshop CS5 and selected “Images”, every individual image no matter which page it was on appeared in the dialog and I could select which image to open. In this case Photoshop is ignoring the rest of the PDF page and just extracting the image. I also tried opening using the “Pages” setting and Photoshop took almost a minute to rasterize the page using the settings from the dialog.
I think if you give it a try you’ll see what I see.
Tom
Thomas
Tom,
Thanks for the investigative reporting. I’m confident of one thing now… that I still have a lot to learn in this area ;-)
cheers,
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?
Keef,
How are you previewing (following up on your earlier question)?
There are multiple commands; notable Save to PDF and Save to Adobe PDF [screenshot]. The first one is pretty useless for books, if I recall correctly. I think it’s the second one you need, and even that may not give the quality you’re expecting.
In the Finder, go to
/Library/PDF Servicesand you will see those scripts there. You can open them in Automator and make adjustments, for example to the resolution of output.There is a discussion on it here “Save PDf to folder as JPEG (Book printing with third party)” that you may be interested in.
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?
Hi Joseph,
I am using the buy book dialogue and then using the preview that is generated from this to view the book. ( Actually I have used the print to pdf dialogue as well.) I will look at the scripts you mention. Thanks for the information.
keef
keef
Joseph,
I’m pretty sure the “Save to Adobe PDF” option you mentioned is only available if you have installed Adobe Acrobat on your Mac. I do not have that option and I also do not have Adobe Acrobat.
Tom
Thomas
Thomas,
Crap, you’re right. And I just tried opening that script on my system and got a “this is not a Universal version and can’t be opened” error. Bugger. The old standby no longer works.
I need to dig back into this one, as it’s definitely come up before.
back soon, hopefully
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?
Folks,
I’m no PDF expert, let’s just put that out there up front :)
I exported a book page as PDF (using print, save as PDF), and tried to compare it to the same image in Aperture at 100%. First problem I have is that I can’t tell what 100% view is on the PDF. Even if I open it in Acrobate, which I do have on one system, viewing at 100% is displaying a relative size—dependent on the print resolution. After all, PDF is meant for printing, right?
If I look at the properties of the PDF in Acrobat, I see the size of it as 12.62 x 9.75 inches, but I don’t see the resolution. Is it 133dpi? 266? 300? What is it?
I think this is the problem that we’re having here. If you produce a small book, say 2” x 2” and print it to PDF, it’ll be noticeably lower quality—but of course, it’s plenty for that 2x2 inch print.
So unless I’m missing something, while the PDF may not contain every pixel of the original image, that’s by design—it creates a PDF at the size that’s needed for print.
The question though is, at what resolution.
That’s what we used to be able to control with that Acrobat-supplied PDF output option, which I can no longer edit.
Anyone got anything to add to this?
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?
Here is how to make a high rez PDF:
http://www.adobe.com/products/postscript/pdfs/highresolution.pdf
Hope that helps.
R
Ps. PDF themselves have no resolution
I should add that though this document is old, it still applies to the concepts. On the mac you’re dealing with PDF as it is part of the API on OS X, and Preview is the app you deal with to view it. Even if you download acrobat reader, you wouldn’t have access to the features you need to make your PDF printable at a high resolution. You need the paid version of acrobat professional to control all that.
R
I used the Save to PDF command from the print dialog for the first page of a Medium Snapshots theme book that I had ordered last summer. I opened the PDF file in Photoshop CS5 as an image. Here’s the image size info:
Pixel Dimensions: 2809 x 2100 pixels
Document size: 8.026 x 6 inches
Resolution: 350 ppi
I think 350 ppi should be enough to satisfy almost anyone unless you’re printing it larger than the original 8x6 size.
Thomas
Robert & Thomas,
Robert — Thanks for the document link.
Thomas — I’m not sure that the 350 ppi picked up by Photoshop is actually accurate. When you open it, I’m not sure that there’s a true “default” and that Photoshop isn’t just pulling in the last settings used. As Robert pointed out, PDFs have no resolution. I think the point there is that you could have a 8x10 inch document, and have one photo in there at 300 ppi and another at 100 ppi. From that logic, it makes sense that there’d be no fixed resolution for the entire PDF file.
Ultimately it comes down to this—are the PDFs made by Aperture (using the Print dialog’s PDF command) sufficient to print? They certainly should be, as that’s the official stand in the Aperture user’s guide—to print using a third-party printer, use the PDF command in the Print dialog [screenshot from Aperture User’s Guide].
I actually do have Acrobat Pro; that’s where I saw the properties that gave the dimensions but not resolution. Which makes sense if PDFs have no resolution of their own. Robert, do you know how to force a particular image to display at 100% pixel view? What I’d ultimately like to do is pixel-peep and go in at 1000% and compare pixels to those from the original photo in Aperture.
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?