Illustrator generated PDF's inconsistent

Some are crispy clear, others are fat & rough

[sgirl]

I'm creating PDF files from Illustrator files
Some of the PDFs come out nice & clean, crisp and wonderful.

Others are problematic:
the images are fine & dandy
the text ... ugh ... thick, dark, and look smudged.
It's OK (my audience can read it)... but ugly.

What's with the inconsistency? I've tried creating
outlines for the text (no good) - I've tried creating the
PDF with the "screen optimized" setting (no good).

It's so so so ugly.
Can someone help me out?

[mivox]

Were there differences in the settings you were using in Illustrator when you created the files? We've got people using almost any graphics software you can think of here, so I'm sure someone ought to ba able to track down the setting you need to fix.

<added>Oh yeah... where are my manners?! Welcome to WebmasterWorld! :) </added>

[EliteWeb]

I noticed that too, but upon printing them they both came out perfect. what about you?

[sgirl]

Hi - the printout is beautiful - except that these pages are
explicitly for my website - therefore I need to resolve
the "web look" problem.

All the pages were originally designed for a printed handbook.
Therefore all the pages have the same sizes, settings, fonts,
etc...

I've also produced two "forms" (with small lines and tick boxes)
that is also blurred ... and it makes the form horrible to
look at. That's OK 'cause it's for printing and faxing,
but man ... what's the deal.

If you want to see what I'm talking about go to:
http*//www.pgss.mcgill.ca/HB

You can see that some of those links are fine, and the
others ... well, the dreaded blur.

I'd have to say - 90% of the time I convert to PDF it does this
blur ... and then, 10% it's beautiful.?

[edited by: mivox at 8:17 pm (utc) on July 10, 2003]
[edit reason] de-activated link [/edit]

[mivox]

Well, I'd have to say it looks just fine to me... I can see a slight blurring around the edges of some letters, but it looks like pretty normal anti-aliasing to me.

<edit>Ooooh... I'm supposed to follow the links, not look at them? hehehe... OK. It looks like the text isn't anti-aliased on the 'ugly' pages. Can you adjust your PDF output settings to anti-alias the text and see if that fixes it?</edit>

[sgirl]

Mivox, my master!

Um, can you tell me when/where I tell Adobe to anti-alias
my text? Just at what point the option comes up - is it
during the "save as..." process?

thank you thank you thank you
s-girl

[mivox]

Are you exporting directly from Illustrator to .pdf format, or are you using Adobe Acrobat to create the .pdf files? If it's a direct export, I'm not sure... I haven't used Illustrator since the mid '90s. There's got to be an Illustrator expert around here somewhere.

I use Adobe InDesign quite often, and it's got an elaborate 3 or 4 part export menu to go through when you export to PDF... but I've never seen it do that to text, and it doesn't give any obvious options about text aliasing.

[mivox]

Another thought... look around for an option to 'optimize for web' (or something like that) on the export menu. I know Acrobat has an option to optimize a file to look good on screen. That would affect text handling for sure.

[sgirl]

Hey hey,

the "optimize for web" option seems to be offered when
I "save for web" but this process turns the files into
.jpg's, not .pdf's. And the "save as" options when you go
through to create a .pdf is a one-gooey process, where
the user is asked to choose the Acrobat level (4.0 or 5.0)
, to embed fonts or not, and allow post-script diddling.

I guess we need an Illustrator expert now. I'm considering
the purchase of Adobe Acrobat to create my .pdf's due to
the inconsistency of those created by Illustrator. But
before I shell out the big bucks, perhaps i'm just not
as big an expert with Illustrator ... and I could resolve
my PDF problem without resorting to Acrobat.

I'll take a look at the help files for "anti-alias" text formats.
But if there's an Illustrator expert out here ... please,
make yourself known ... I'll shower you with praise if you
can help me with this one.

thanks again
s-girl

[mivox]

If you're planning on doing a lot of PDFs, Acrobat would be a good investment... Creating a document from scratch with Acrobat is a painful process, but when you install the full version of Acrobat, you get the ability to create pdfs through a print-to-pdf function from any other program. On Mac, it is set up as one of your desktop printers; in Windows, Acrobat Distiller shows up as one of your printer choices.

You can even make decent-looking PDFs with *ack* MSWord.

Can't help a bit with the Illustrator issue though. :(