High Quality PDF's

[hanguolaohu]

I've noticed when I create a PDF of a webpage using Apple's built-in "print to PDF" the files are very small, but the quality of images is not high resolution. I have some webpages I want to save in high resolution, is there a way to do this with "print to PDF", or do I have to use Adobe Acrobat or some other software?

Thanks,
Alexander

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

Most likely the source has the low quality images. Try a higher quality source and see if the PDF files are better quality.

 

[oYx]

did you manage to resolve this?

i noticed the same problem too. when comparing the pdf to the original webpage, it's obvious that the pdf's image quality is much lower. the text and all look fine though, as they're not images.

 

[hanguolaohu]

I now use a program called Websnapper which I like very much. Although there doesn't seem to be image compression or quality controls. I've seen another program called LittleSnapper which also looks nice, but I haven't tried it.

 

[ukmacpro]

Use print to save as PDF-X

 

[oYx]

still seems to give the same quality. any way to adjust the image quality?

 

[Dane D.]

The image quality isn't going to improve unless you have high res images to start with. Web images are low-res for fast loading, there's no way to make it better. Everything on a web page is made for speed not quality. The old adage; 'garbage in, garbage out', applies here. The only way to produce high-quality PDFs is starting with the highest quality images and not compressing them when distilling the file.

 

[oYx]

read my post about having compared the source and the captured.

if you really want, i can do a screenshot using grab of the original web page next to the resulting pdf.

i'm just curious if there's a way to get it to not compress the image so much when it prints to pdf.

 

[oYx]

attached a comparison.

the top is the web page as loaded in firefox, the bottom is the resulting pdf (print > pdf > save as pdf) set to "actual size" as loaded in preview.

not only is the image quality lowered, the dimensions are reduced as well. i'm sure it's simply a matter of finding where we can set the compression amount, and that's the question.

 

[Dane D.]

read my post about having compared the source and the captured.
if you really want, i can do a screenshot using grab of the original web page next to the resulting pdf.
i'm just curious if there's a way to get it to not compress the image so much when it prints to pdf.

I did, what don't you understand is, web images are low-res, period. You can't make them better. Even if you had Acrobat Distiller and could set compression options, it still will look bad. Try Paparazzi!, it can image the whole web page and save out as a TIFF file. It's free and I use it all the time. It won't capture Flash sites.

 

[oYx]

yes. i understand it's low res. no one here ever said that web images are high-res.

but what we're saying here is that the image gets even lower in quality when it prints to pdf. i hate to say this, but cutepdf on windows doesn't do that, or at least it lets you decide how much you want it to compress the images.

 

[oYx]

i've tried paparazzi!, web snapper and little snapper.

for most pages, they are fine, but once you need to capture a web page that requires you to log in, you're out of luck.

there is a work-around way to do it (save as web archive and pointing one of those apps to the saved file), but i like to think there's a better way.

 

[hanguolaohu]

I agree with oYx, that's why I posted this in the first place. We realize that web images are not high rez. But the problem with "Print to PDF" is it further compresses the image, and text visibly gets blurry. Perhaps this doesn't matter to most people, but I have certain online articles that I would like to archive at the same quality that they look online. This should not be that difficult to accomplish.

 

[portent]

I agree with oYx, that's why I posted this in the first place. We realize that web images are not high rez. But the problem with "Print to PDF" is it further compresses the image, and text visibly gets blurry. Perhaps this doesn't matter to most people, but I have certain online articles that I would like to archive at the same quality that they look online. This should not be that difficult to accomplish.

No, it's not.

Remember that PDF is bound to a page size. It will shrink (not compress) the page size to fit the paper you're "printing" onto. If you're viewing the PDF onscreen, it will be blurry depending on how you scale the PDF.

Go ahead and zoom into the PDF. You'll see the same pixels as the original image on the web page. If you were to print the PDF, it would print at the same resolution as the original web page.