PDF created from Pagemaker 7.0.1 printing too dark, and yes I've read the FAQs

[Lay-Ping Tan]

Hi all,

I'm currently using PageMaker 7.0.1 on a Windows 2000 machine (SP3) and Adobe Acrobat 5.0.5. I have a document with a grayscale TIFF graphic that, when distilled, prints far too dark on all our postscript printers (Tektronix Phaser 850, Konica 7060, HP LaserJet 4MV). I have tried various things: printing from PageMaker using Distiller as the printer, printing the document to a postscript file using settings from the Tektronix (the printer I'm using for printing the the final document) and then distilling it, using the Export to PDF function. I have played with various compression and color management settings as suggested in the PM FAQs and in the support document found here: <http://pagemakersupport.adobe.com/adobeknowbase/root/public/pm3d8e.htm?DREID=7917>, but no dice. I've tried and tried to find the infamous "convert CMYK graphics to RGB" checkbox, but I can't find it in either PageMaker or Distiller, nor can I find the Color Model tab on the Export to PDF dialog box. It's quite irritating because the system worked fine in PageMaker 6.5 with Acrobat 4.0.

Does anyone have any other suggestions? Am I missing something here?

Thanks,

Lay-Ping

[Lay-Ping Tan]

Huh. In other words, Erik: "We don't know why it happens, we don't know how to fix it, and we're not planning to fix it." You'd think they'd at least release a patch so we can go back to being able to specify RGB or CMYK a la PM65.... But thanks for letting me know what the official Adobe response is. I guess I'll have to maintain TWO versions of PageMaker on my machine now, since creating PDFs from PM that will print reliably is pretty critical to my department. Unless you guys have discovered a magic workaround? I swear, in some ways PageMaker is slowly devolving.

I'll dink around some more (I'm stubborn) and if I find anything, I'll post it here.

Thanks,

Lay-Ping

[Phil Osborn]

Jay,

This is for real (maybe nuts, too). I can't get the grayscale images to compress. I tried for hours to find some reason why I was getting enormous pdf files, until I broke it down to a binary search and discovered that it was the greyscale images every time.

[Jay Chevako]

I have never had an pdf grow in size because of grayscale images. Check your
settings.
I would recommend Photoshop eps images, pagemaker is not going to mess with
them.
Jay

[Erik Stedman]

Lay-Ping,
We are also having no luck when exporting PageMaker 7.01 documents to PDF. Most colours bare no Resemblance with the master PM doc? yet when exporting with PM6.5, the PDF is fine (W.Y.S.I.W.Y.G.)We have contacted Adobe support, below is there response:

"My hunch is that the problem lies with the colour model being used
for the colours as they are defined in Pagemaker and the way they are
converted to PDF, either to rgb or cmyk. It would seem that PM7 does not
give the exact same results as PM65 because the PDF export no longer allows
you to specify the RGB colour model as was the case with PM65.
I'm not sure what the eventual output of the pdf will be (web/prepress etc), but you will see that the problematic colours seem to be those defined as RGB colours (not only blue, but for example the green in the sample document also displays this behaviour). At the moment, because of the changes in the Export PDF function and
postscript generation, the only workaround to get the exact same behaviour
as in PM65 would be to create the pdf from 65, but like I said that might
depend on the colour space requirements for the pdf files in question.
However, at the moment, we can not tell you if this issue will be fixed in
the next release of Pagemaker, as we do not have any information about
future products."

I hope this helps?
Erik.

[Jay Chevako]

"Phil Osborn"
Converting a grayscale image to rgb to get a samller pdf is just plain nuts

There are separate compression dialogs for color, grayscale and bitmap
images in distiller. It sounds like you don't have the grayscale compression
dialog set right.
Jay

[Phil Osborn]

I convert all greyscale to RGB before exporting to pdf using Distiller. Otherwise, the files are HUGE! For some reason, Distiller refuses to compress greyscale on our system, both now with P7 and before with P6.5. Was about to tear out hair (my one remaining) until realized it only happened when I had greyscale images.

[Erik Stedman]

Lay-Ping,
You've hit the nail on the head!
They take are money, Mess us around, give no work around, no fix-up patches - personally I'm disgusted with Adobe! What was the point of releasing some half baked steaming pile (of you know what!?)I'm just glad we've kept our PM6.5. Below is more spiel from Adobe:

"It is being tracked as bug against PageMaker, however they
are currently unable to give any confirmation as to when the issue might
be resolved."

Notahappychappie ;@(

Erik

[Penny Sitler]

Jay & Phil,

If your file contains ONLY greyscale images, we get MUCH smaller files by making our PDF from a black separation print. Don't know why, but it works.

Penny

[Lay-Ping Tan]

OK, so I uninstalled PageMaker 7, cleaned out the registry as best I could, then reinstalled PM65 and PM7. And I discovered a workaround. If you're in PM7 and you use the OLD Distiller PPD file (ADISTILL.PPD) that came with PM65 instead of the new one, the color problem is solved. The downside? Bloated file sizes. The PDF created with adistill.ppd was over 2 MB, compared to the PDF created with adist5.ppd, which came in at a slim n trim 300 KB. So my advice is, for those of you with the same problem I have, use the old Distiller PPD to create PDFs with accurate color. If color is not critical and/or hard disk space is, use adist5.ppd to create your PDF.

It's not perfect, but hey, it works for me....

Lay-Ping