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FIXING CRIPPLED PDFS |
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FIXING
CRIPPLED PDFS Some publishers offer only
a low resolution “Web quality” PDF to authors, while others (e.g. Allen
Press) charge a premium price for a full resolution PDF. The low resolution
PDFs are commonly only 72 dpi, and are only suitable for “eBook” use in that
they look fine on a screen but print poorly. The printed type is fuzzy, and
can sometimes be fixed by setting your printer to 1200 dpi. The first page prints
fine on a Postscript printer, but each succeeding page must be printed
separately. I have found that the
obvious solution of using the crippled PDF to create a PS or EPS file using
Adobe Acrobat then recreating a high-resolution PDF from the PS or EPS file
is apparently impossible (at least to me). On the other hand, a PDF suitable
for immediate desktop printing can be created from the crippled “eBook” PDF
using easily available free software. That PDF can be placed on the Web as a
“reprint” that is entirely adequate for distribution. The idea for this was
from an article on the Web that indicated that one can make decent print
copies of crippled PDFs using GSView and Ghostscript. How-To Steps: 1. Install (or have
installed, or find someone with these installed) GSView and Ghostscript (free
programs available on the Web). 2. Use GSView File menu to
“Select” the crippled PDF file. 3. “Convert” the file
using “pdfwrite” device and “600 dpi” resolution (or 720 dpi). 4. Save as Filename.pdf because
GSView does not automatically attach the “.pdf”. This may not increase
resolution of illustrations of low eBook resolution, but the type will print
well. Make sure the page size is correct for the original publication. --- Thanks to Neal Evenhuis
for pointing out that this only works for Windows, OS/2 and Linux
platforms. No solution yet for Mac
users who might pursue the option of saving to PS or EPS and making a new PDF
with Acrobat, or some different brand of PDF software from the PS or EPS file.
- October 26, 2007. --- Note on August 14, 2008:
If you have the original images of the figures, and they are poorly resolved
in the reprint you get from the publisher, you can use the image replace
function in NitroPDF, amazing PDF-modifying software for only about US$100
(search the Web for this). Snazzies up the illustrations in a jiffy. Use its
optimizing feature to reduce final product to 50 percent to bring down file
size without sensible degradation of the PDF. No, NitroPDF does not increase the
resolution of the font, dagnabit, just the images. |
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