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PWeareB
Inspiring
March 7, 2020
Question

Output Settings for Automate PDF Presentation

  • March 7, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 9542 views

Hello All:

I am creating a multi-page pdf document using Photoshop CC 2019 with the feature "Automate, PDF." My PDF will contain only images, such as a portfolio.

While it is fairly easy for me to create, I notice that once I open the pdf with Acrobat or Reader, the images do not look sharp, they look a bit "jaggy," even though they looked spot-on in Photoshop when I was creating the PDF.

Does anyone have tips for the settings, or some other feature, when I create the pdf that may be creating this problem?

Thanks.

PatrickB

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1 reply

Conrad_C
Community Expert
Conrad_CCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 7, 2020

After you enter the filename and destination folder, the Save Adobe PDF dialog appears. In the Compression panel there, you can specify the downsampling resolution and the compression quality. If the current settings are too low-resolution for the display on which the PDF presentation will be viewed, you'll want to adjust them upward.

 

P
PWeareBAuthor
Inspiring
March 8, 2020

Thanks for the reply Conrad.

I chose "Do Not Downsample" because I wanted to keep the pictures at the size I made them in PS: 500 x 500 pixels at 72 dpi.  Would that make a difference?  However, I left the jpeg compression setting at maximum.

What about the "Adobe PDF Preset"?  I tried a couple different ones and no change.

Thanks.
PatrickB

Conrad_C
Community Expert
Conrad_CCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 8, 2020

If the "For images above" value remains set to 450 ppi (or anything above 72 ppi), the 72 ppi photos aren't going to get downsampled because they are below that downsampling threshold value.

 

When the photos look jaggy or unsharp in Acrobat or Reader, is their size on the screen larger than it was in Photoshop? For example, if you open the PDF presentation in Acrobat, is it presented full screen? Because if the document page is shown larger in Acrobat or Reader than it is in Photoshop, the images will have a lower apparent resolution as the same number of pixels are stretched across a larger area. And 500 x 500 pixels is considered very low resolution to start with. So that's the next question: Is it possible that the images have too few pixels for the expected display size of the presentation?

 

What are the pixel dimensions of the screen are you targeting for showing this PDF presentation? For example, if you wanted to show a presentation on a 4K TV at the full resolution of that display, the page size should be 3840 x 2160 pixels, and any images to be shown full screen should meet those dimensions too. If a 500 x 500 pixel image was added to that presentation, it would only appear equal to the screen resolution if it was limited to 500 pixels or less along one side. If a 500 x 500 pixel image was scaled to the full height of a 1080 HD or 4K screen, in both cases it would look jaggy because 500 pixels is less than half as tall as a 1080HD screen, and less than 1/4 as tall as a 2160 4K screen.

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