Graphics in PDF

[Tom Campbell <tcampbell -at- WEATHER -dot- COM>]

Sorry, folks, I don't still have the procedures I wrote up in a previous life for getting graphics to look & print right in PDF files created in Word and printed to PCL printer from Acrobat Reader 3.01.

My experience with all this was long ago (last year) in another job far far away, so I'm working from (deteriorating) memory here.  However, what Chris and others described sounds painfully famililar.  I remember that in our case the problem resulted from a specific combination of factors:
- PCL, not PostScript, printer (an HP LaserJet 5M)
- using PDFWriter (not Distiller) to create PDF files
- viewing & printing the files with Acrobat Reader 3.01

The graphics looked and printed fine with Reader 2.1, but we couldn't just revert to the old Reader because we couldn't keep our users from downloading Reader 3.01.  

Our solution was ultimately a pretty simple one: create PDF files by first saving the Word docs as PostScript files, and then converting those to PDF with Acrobat Distiller.  We had to experiment with various settings in Job Options to get the files to look and print the way we wanted them to.

This solution resulted from hours of experimentation, messages from several helpful people via newsgroups & Adobe forums, and phone calls with a couple of people from Adobe tech support.  These adventures taught me that Distiller can produce great-looking PDF files, but PDFWriter was really not intended for top-quality work.

Hope this helps shed some light on the issue.

Tom Campbell