How to Save PDF files for Perfect Printing

Why should I use PDF files?
For starters, they save disk space. Which is a plus if you like to send your files to the printer electronically. Smaller files mean shorter uploads and downloads, especially with a dialup connection, saving you time as well. Of course, the best reason of all to work with PDF files is, when properly prepared they can save you a lot of money, too. A number of office programs do a fine job until you want to use them for serious printing. A well-made PDF will cut hours of troubleshooting time from your bill.

Some of the more problematic programs for printers are: Microsoft Word, Excel, Power Point, Publisher, and Corel Draw. If you are using one of these for offset printing, it’s time to start using PDF!

Ok, what do I need?
Surprisingly little. There are a number of options available. You can download (free) PDF Writer, a self-contained virtual printer that you select as if it were your paper printer, and instead of a page popping out of your laser printer, a PDF pops up on your desktop. Adobe also offers free downloads of their printer drivers (Mac & PC) that enable you to print documents to disk as either a Postscript document or a PDF file.
www.adobe.com/support/downloads/main.html

Another option is Adobe’s “Create Adobe PDF Online” service. You can create unlimited PDF files on their secure server for $9.99/mo. or $99.99/yr.

The workhorse of choice is Acrobat Distiller, which comes with the full version of Adobe Acrobat, not to be confused with the stripped-down “Reader” version. Reader is free, but it can’t create PDF’s. The full Acrobat 5.0 can be had for $50 or less.

What’s next?
At this point we get into the nuts and bolts of the PDF format. The number of options in your print dialog may seem overwhelming but we only need concern ourselves with a few of them to get great results:

1. Fonts
2. Compression
3. Downsampling
   

Fonts. Always embed all of them. Do not make subsets (which means, embedding only the characters you typed to create your document). You just solved your printer’s biggest headache.
Compression. You are most likely already familiar with the most common compression schemes: jpeg, zip, stuffit, lzw, etc. Compressing your files is great for email but takes away from the quality of a print job. So deselect all the check boxes for compression. There are so-called “lossless” compression schemes, but for our purposes it’s easier to just turn off compression altogether.

Downsampling. Another way to reduce file size for emailing and another thing to avoid when preparing your files for printing. Basically, you can specify that the images in your document can be made more pixelated. A 300 dpi image has far more detail than a 72 dpi image. Keep the full resolution of your images by deselecting the downsampling in the PDF creation dialog box.

That’s it. Although PDF files tend to be much smaller than your native application files, the goal is to keep the file size normal and quality to a maximum when preparing PDFs to print.
And of course, if you have questions or experience difficulties, we can help.

If you need any additional information, please contact us at:

Christmas City Printing Co, Inc.
Phone: 610.868.5844 • Fax: 610.694.9437
www.xmascity.com • E-mail: mail@xmascity.com