PDF conspiracy! :0)

[pnodrog]

I had a similar problem years ago and ended up using Scribus desktop publishing ( https://www.scribus.net/ ) anytime I wished to make a multi-page PDF document with good control over the images. Free and not overly hard to learn the basics.

[DanK]

I had a similar problem years ago and ended up using Scribus desktop publishing ( https://www.scribus.net/ ) anytime I wished to make a multi-page PDF document with good control over the images. Free and not overly hard to learn the basics.

A helpful link. Thanks for posting.

[Round Tuit]

In my version of Bridge - you don't. No way to enter DPI.
BTW - wanted to post the screenshot but couldn't figure out how to do that.

Tried Lightroom's similar feature in print module. That does have DPI, but doesn't have pdf as an output! Only printer and JPEG!

Tried PDFCreator as a printer (to print from Lightroom) - result atrocious (and rotated 90 degrees for whatever reason)!


This attempt not to pay for Acrobat pro is not worth my time... I'll just go get it...

I am still using CS4 and under the document tab of the pdf module in bridge, you can select the paper type, paper size and the resolution. The options for resolution are: 300, 150, 96 and 72 dpi plus "full".

[vladimir]

One of my favorites: "If the problem can be solved by writing a check, then it's not a problem, it's an expense".
In this case the expense for my project is $22.99 - one month subscription to Acrobat Standard DC. I think I can afford that.
I tried Acrobat Pro (only had several minutes to play with it), and it works great. So I am going to stop looking for alternatives, and just get what works.
Thanks for all the ideas!

[vladimir]

I am still using CS4 and under the document tab of the pdf module in bridge, you can select the paper type, paper size and the resolution. The options for resolution are: 300, 150, 96 and 72 dpi plus "full".

Here is mine in ADOBE BRIDGE CS4 3.0.0.464

No resolution choices, only a selection between "High Quality" and "Low Quality".
"High Quality" option looks promising, and could work, maybe.
My problem was not the quality in this case, but the fact that the output has white border around the image. I can't have that. Is there a way to get rid of that? I didn't find one, but I didn't spend too much time looking.

[vladimir]

To finish the story...
It turned out that $22.99 did not solve my problem either. I spoke too soon when I said "it works great". I only checked the first page of my calendar, which did look fine, but then inside I found a couple of images looking like this (more than a couple were broken, actually, but I'll post a cpouple here):




That totally looks like a bug in Acrobat SW. I called their support about that, which was a waste of time (as expected) and then asked for my money back. That worked! That's a nice thing to know - if you buy a piece of SW from Adobe, which doesn't work, you can "return" the product - i.e.give up the license, and get your money back.

But now I had to find something that works... And here is what I found:

1. PowerPoint can produce high resolution output, generating one file per page. Seems to be a relatively new feature of PowerPoint, but it exists - described here . So, I generated 26 BMP files - one per page. Used BMP format - just to make sure there was no compression (quality loss) at this step.
2. In PS I created an Action to convert BMP into PDF. In PDF save menu I can specify the Compression method, and the Image Quality of the output. E.g. there is an option Compression = "None". I tried that - the combined size (of 26 PDF's) was about 200MB, which was too much for my printer provider. I ended up using "High quality" JPEG, and that was fine. How do I know it was fine? I can describe, if there is interest. I was scientific about that
   Ok, as a result of this step, I had 26 PDF files.
3. There is this nice, little, completely free utility, called PDFsam Basic, which lets you combine many PDF's into one. Works great, and takes seconds. Used that to combine 26 PDF's into one.

So, that worked.
I am writing all this in case somebody else is having similar problems, and for myself - next year there will be another calendar, and I'll come back here to remember what I did to make it work.

BTW, if you are interested, you can see the result here. Let me know what you think.

[Round Tuit]

Here is mine in ADOBE BRIDGE CS4 3.0.0.464

No resolution choices, only a selection between "High Quality" and "Low Quality".
"High Quality" option looks promising, and could work, maybe.
My problem was not the quality in this case, but the fact that the output has white border around the image. I can't have that. Is there a way to get rid of that? I didn't find one, but I didn't spend too much time looking.

I don't understand why but my version of bridge is also 3.0.0.464 and the options for resolution are the ones that I mentionned before. The other fields on that tab are the same as your version. I have also looked at the layout tab and have not found a way to eliminate completely the margins.

BTW, your finished calendar is splendid. Congratulation.

[DanK]

Looks very good. I have the full version of Acrobat, but there still are parts of this I could use, I suspect.

[Rufus]

I am glad you found a solution in the end to produced your excellent calendar.