Tiger Fix PDF Shortcomings?

[ericschmerick]

Hi All -

I have a question for those who have received Tiger . . .

One my biggest headaches right now is the fact that PDF output from Apples iWork Pages program does not preserve the drop shadows unless you use the full version of Acrobat. I don't own the full version of acrobat, and have been thinking about springing for it ($300, ug, to resolve a bug in my $79 program).

I noticed a few new options like PDF/X, etc, on one of the information screens for Tiger on the Apple site. I got the impression that the PDF rendering engine has been updated quite a bit.

So my question is this . . . has anyone who is now using Tiger (rec'd tiger) also tried outputting PDF from the Pages program to see if the drop shadow problem is resolved? My fingers are crossed . . .

Thanks,
Eric Esser
eric@marthastreetstudio.com
http://www.marthastreetstudio.com/

 

[snickelfritz]

Have you tried "output options" in the printer dialog?
ie: choose "postscript" as the file type, then open the file in Preview to rasterize it and convert it PDF.
I have no clue if this will work better than simply saving the file as pdf in the first place.

GL

 

[ericschmerick]

Amazing. You just saved me $300.

I had no idea there was an output option for postscript. I've looked in that section 10 times, but I've never checked the box to see that other output options existed (the default option shown is PDF, so I guess I just took for granted that this was yet another way to create a PDF - don't know why I would have thought that the drop down box had no other options).

It doesn't surprise me that I didn't know this (I'm barely able to tie my shoes), but what does surprise me is the fact that I've read about 10,000 message board threads about the "drop shadow" problem with Pages, and they have consistently said that the "only workaround" is buying the full version of Acrobat!!

But, in about 18 seconds, after reading your post, I was able to output to .ps, open in preview, save as pdf, and open in adobe reader, to find that the pages are rendered PERFECTLY, drop shadows and all. YES! I've been hesitant to spend any time in pages because of this issue, and you've solved it for me!!

Thanks a ton,
Eric

 

[fatfish]

I've had same issue, sometimes drop shadows work, sometimes they don't.

Thing is I have acrobat 7, but I never realised that "save as PDF" used preview to create the output file as I always end up with an acrobat file.

So I've now tried choosing acrobat as my printer and also the workaround suggested above, both of these methods fix the drop shadow problem, but now I have dodgy text.

By dodgy, I mean odd bitts of text display slightly below or above others, and this is text that is supposed to be on the same line.

Not really clued up on text and fonts and all that stuff, I'm using PDF/Times/regular/18. Any ideas what is going on.

I know it's nothing to do with tiger, but help would be appreciated.