PDF specifications
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All Photographic images contained in the submitted PDF filke should be CMYK color, 300 dpi at full size. Please follow the options below for the Job Options menus when creating a PDF file. If using an Acrobat compression preset (Exporting from Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign) please choose "Press Quality." If choosing the settings manually (Acrobat Distiller), use the following specifications:
General Menu:- Compatability - Acrobat 5.0 (PDF 1.4)
- Object Level Compression - Tags only
- Auto-Rotate Pages - Off
- Binding - Left
- Resolution - 2400 dpi
- Binding - Left
- Embed thumbnails - Uncheck
- Optimize for fast web view - Uncheck
- Downsample - Bicubic Downsampling to 300 ppi
- Compression: Automatic (JPEG)
- Image Quality - Maximum
- Monochrome Downsample - Bicubic Downsampling to 1200 ppi
- Compression - CCITT Group 4
- Anti-alias to gray - Off
- Embed All Fonts - Check
- Subset All Embedded Fonts Below: 100% - Check
- When Embedding Fails: Cancel Job
- Settings file - None
- Leave Color Unchanged - Check
- Intent - Default
- Preserve Under Color Removal and Black Generation - Check
- When transfer functions are found - Apply
- Preserve halftone information - Check
- Allow PostScript file to override Adobe PDF settings - Check
- Convert gradients to smooth shades - Check
- Preserve Level 2 copypage semantics - Check
- Preserve overprint settings - Check
- Overprinting default is nonzero overprinting - Check
- Save Adobe PDF settings inside PDF file - Check
- Save original JPEG images in PDF if possible - Check
- Process DSC comments - Check
- Preserve EPS information from DSC - Check
- Preserve document information from DSC - Check
- Resize page and center artwork for EPS files - Check
- Leave all others Unchecked
The above settings are for Acrobat Distiller 6.0, but the settings will translate fairly closely if using a different (newer) version.
PDF files can also be quite simply generated using programs such as Illustrator, Photoshop and Pagemaker (consult the program's User's Guide for instructions) and some other programs. Generally PDF files generated in this way are reliable, provided that the images placed in the file are hi-res (300 dpi at full size). Making a hi-res PDF file that contains a low-res file will not make the low-res image print any better.