image best practice for pdf?

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cayennep
Sr. Propeller Head
Posts: 390
Joined: Mon Jul 26, 2010 3:42 pm

image best practice for pdf?

Post by cayennep »

we have a huge UI that doesn't work if the browser window is resized (so can't use resizer)

using a 60% thumbnail style works ok in the HTML but these images look terrible in PDF (the thumbnail doesn't apply in print, but most of the images look pretty bad)

Using png, which should have been fine.

tips? suggestions? I think I usually avoid PDFs, but also something about our screens possibly...
Psider
Propellus Maximus
Posts: 811
Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2011 1:32 am

Re: image best practice for pdf?

Post by Psider »

In the past when I did print output, I never used images resized smaller than 70%, and only ever resized using an image editor, never using HTML or CSS properties. That was based on much experimentation and printing through Word and PDF files many, many years ago (and don't talk about the colour scheme that printed in greyscale best #myeyestheyburn). Compiling, simplistically, applies a css property to fit the image into the printed page. I seem to remember there were some image options for print output you could play with, but it was a looooong time ago. The compression through an image editor might have improved since then, but I don't think the HTML/CSS scaling thing has...

If the image is still far too wide to fit within a printed page maybe you could have a highly resized, but essentially unreadable image as a general guide to the screen layout, then have smaller screenshots of specific parts of the screen, inserted into the procedure or definition topic or whatever at convenient spots.
cayennep
Sr. Propeller Head
Posts: 390
Joined: Mon Jul 26, 2010 3:42 pm

Re: image best practice for pdf?

Post by cayennep »

I'm only resizing in snagit - the ginormous ones are not resized, as Word usually does this well. However, PDF does not.

Even the snagit-resized ones look crappy tho, and they're not scaled that much.
Psider
Propellus Maximus
Posts: 811
Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2011 1:32 am

Re: image best practice for pdf?

Post by Psider »

Maybe go into Printers and Devices, and check out the printing preferences for Adobe PDF (assuming you have that as a print destination). Default Settings > Edit and play with the options there.

Edit: I assume Flare uses the Adobe PDF printer, but you might need to confirm with Madcap support.
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