Participant

Answered

Enhance Thin Lines Off!

Forum|Forum|15 years ago
June 23, 2010
10 replies
66842 views

Adobe needs to make the enhance thin lines option a document specific property; like initial view magnification or layout.

Too often does this view preference cause elegant subtle lines to be viewed as bulky eye sores. As a designer when I set a line weight at .25 pt or .125 pt, That's the line weight I want it to be viewed at! on screen or on print. It does not make sense to need to ask clients to change their adobe acrobat preferences to uncheck enhance thin lines off, so that they can view a document properly.

.PDF documents need to have the ability to be initially viewed with the enhance thin lines option unchecked.

Who's with me? How do we get adobe to make this important change?

Correct answer lrosenth

My point was that generally I would like to have my content appears as I intent. The PDF/Adobe reader combi has been very good at this.

I recognise that as programs evolve they optimise for different types of users.

My preference would be "Not to have" the Enhance thin lines option.

As to the point of vector vs. text - I generally don't convert text to vector but in illustrators PDF export it's a problem.

Please note that there are many threads about this problem.

M

>I recognise that as programs evolve they optimise for different types of users.

>My preference would be "Not to have" the Enhance thin lines option.

>

Exactly. For you, you'd like it not to do that. For other users, they want it to happen. That's why it's a preference

FWIW: That setting was created to work around a problem in some 3rd party PDF creation applications for office-class applications where the lines of a spreadsheet or table would disappear when viewed in Acrobat becuse they were "too thin". Given that were more of those out there than 'outlined text'-based PDFs, we set the defaults to match the more common case.

As to issues with Illustrator' PDF export - I am not aware of any problems with text export in that application. If you know of a thread or a specific bug number, I am happy to investigate.

M

Miroslav5E42

Participant

Hi,

I had the same issue with my PDF files, especially with a company logo that contains vectorized text.

I'm a programmer and I found a way how to fix it. I created a program that can modify PDF files in a way that Acrobat Reader can't recognize vertical and horizontal lines and cannot "enhance" them.

I made it available online, so anyone can "repair" his PDF files for a very small fee.

URL for third party commercial service removed by moderator.

I hope it will help someone.

Dov Isaacs

Legend

The problem is not necessarily limited to vertical and horizontal lines.

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)

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hakimio

Participant

Acrobat reader must be the worst PDF viewer nowadays. I've tried 4 different PDF viewers and they all displayed PDF generated with wkhtmltopdf exactly as intended, but not Acrobat.... It has to "enhance" everything to look as horrible as possible. Here are some pictures of exactly the same PDF rendered by Foxit Reader and Acrobat Reader.

Foxit Reader

Acrobat Reader

lrosenth

Adobe Employee

Without seeing the PDF in question – it’s impossible to actually compare the results and determine which is actually more correct according to the spec.

However, the general issue is simply what to do with values that are not on even “pixels” (eg. 0.5)…The PDF Standard (ISO 32000-1) does not give specific guidance (on purpose!) nd you will find that pretty much everyone who has ever written a graphics engine has their own preference on the topic.

H

hakimio

Participant

I can send the PDF in question to you personally if you can give me your email.

I know that Foxit Reader (and all the other PDF viewers) renders the PDF in question correctly because I know how html which was used to produce the PDF using wkhtmltopdf is rendered in Chrome browser.

The top border (the one in the header) is supposed to be exactly 1 pixel and that's how it's rendered in Foxit reader. Your "enhance" thin lines feature makes at least double, if not triple the size.

Also, as you can see in the image I posted, Acrobat reader is unable to render dashed line in the line graph. I don't think that's related to half pixels either...

U

UNCDC

Participant

I strongly believe that the line enhancement should be a preference that can be saved with a document by the author. I imagine the preference can be split into two in the user preferences panel: a global default that's used when one isn't specified by the document, and another one to optionally override the document-level preference set by the author. When Acrobat is first installed, the global default would be set to enable the thin line enhancement, but the document-level override would not be selected. This would satisfy a lot more people; most end users wouldn't know the difference since their office applications/spreadsheet outputs would be unaffected, and those of us with technical illustrations, etc. could share PDFs without having to tell everyone to disable this preference manually.

The workaround for converting strokes to outlines can require a lot of extra work and increases the file size needlessly.

I have two examples where line enhancement is highly undesirable: grid lines on graphs and hatching on CAD drawings. These elements make the graphic look terrible at lower zoom levels with enhancement. In these cases, it's highly preferable that the thin lines disappear/fade rather than be enhanced.

I may be mistaken, but it seems that Acrobat Reader for Android doesn't implement thin line enhancement at all, or at least does so much more intelligently.

R

ryantoyota

Participant

Another example where thin line enhancement looks awful is vector logo designs that contain rectangles (often as the letter I or L). If you have a small logo in the corner of the document, it makes the logo look unbalanced and wrong. Granted, this is easier to fix manually than the issues you list (by adding points to the vector or slightly modifying the rectangles to be imperfect) but this shouldn't be necessary.

G

geeksci999

Participating Frequently

I know it's been a while since the last post but I'm running into this problem now. Enhance Thin Lines is ruining how my image is displayed when opened in acrobat. I'm up against a deadline for publishing these and I have at most a day or two to fix this problem.

Is there any way at all to include metadata in the pdf file that displays the content without enhancing thin lines?

Please help. My only other option is to sacrifice the resolution and rasterize these images.

R

RAMSA-Graphics

Participant

Enhance thin lines has no effect on your artwork. It only changes the way it is displayed on the monitor of the computer you are using.

Your artwork will print perfectly with the feature on or off.

Just tell anyone viewing it in screen to turn the feature off

M

maxwyss

Legend

I'm aware of what this setting does. My problem is that it changes how the image is displayed on the monitor. I have no way of telling people to change their viewing settings. Even if I could, most people who will read my publication online wouldn't have the patience to bother with that anyway. Furthermore, this isn't artwork that I'm trying to publish, rather it's scientific data and accuracy is key. All I need to know is if there is a way that I can control the "Enhance Thin Lines" setting from within the document so that anyone who opens the document will automatically view it WITHOUT thin lines enhanced.

IMHO, it is a non-problem, and there is no particular way on document level to "solve" it, because the effect will differ from user to user, depending on the screen size (in pixels) and the resolution their Acrobat/Reader is set.

What you can do on document level, would be set it to open at 100%. This may minimize the effect. But, as soon as the users start to change the zoom level, the effect may happen, but always in different ways.

That said, you will have to decide between seeing a line, or seeing no line at certain zoom levels (which may be small when the PDF is viewed on a tablet or a phone).

M

Manolo_Folcarelli

Participant

This needs to be solved!

A major point of adobe is to know how the recipient sees your content.

Just stupid that non serif letter Capital i and and non capital L - becomes bolder if enhance thin lines is active.

Manolo

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Hitender_Prakash

Adobe Employee

Hi All,

You can put your bug report or feature request for any Adobe Product at :

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

Thanks.

M

maxwyss

Legend

It might be an idea to have this setting document-specific.

However, this setting only makes sense if your display unit has a resolution of 600 dpi or more (if looking at your document at 100%).

It is simple math. Take your monitor's resolution and calculate the narrowest line it can display, considering that 1 pt is 1/72 of an inch.

Next simple math example: calculate which resolution your monitor needs to display a line 1/8 of a point wide.

Hope this helps.

Max Wyss.

B

browntimmy

Known Participant

I can't believe there's a default preference that makes certain fonts look horrendous on screen. I wonder how many hiring managers have looked at resumes and assumed the applicant was a sloppy typist. How has Adobe missed fixing this over multiple versions?

D

Designher

Participant

This is a topic I've been hoping that would get addressed. As a designer it is important to have 100% transparency between how I view my work and how I want my clients or viewers to view my work. I find it frustrating to not have this and more importantly I feel that it is awkward to direct my clients or even institutions on how THEY SHOULD view or do something by telling them directions on turning off this option. I just find it offensive and a turnoff to them. I already sent in a request to Adobe to expand the specific/customizable intitial view settings for specific pdfs. I was wondering if there were any updates on this issue or any tweaks/fixes/known scripts or anything?!

Mike_Gondek10189183

Community Expert

I am 100% with you that the preference enhance thin lines should be document specific.

S

sabaki1

Participant

I couldn't agree more! I also have the problem that the reader and acrobat are adding white lines at the edges of my documents (typically lower and right sides). It also seems to be cropping the stroke/frame that I sometimes use at the outer edge of an image. This might not be too bad, except it doesn't crop the edges evenly, so any frame you have placed in Illustrator comes out looking uneven and (as with the white lines) very amateurish.

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