: Graphic in PDF gets "messed up" by Adobe Reader I designed a big front-cover for a magazine in Photoshop. I put the PNG into an ODT-Open-Office-File and then save it as a PDF. When I view

@Harper654

I second that disparagement of PDF viewers and PDF because I have had numerous problems over the years.


I created a simple graphic in inkscape that rendered differently 4 ways on 4 viewers.
Badly formed (per Adobe) PDF files can display ok on 3rd party viewers but not in acroread.
A PDF file can be viewable fine but its text not selectable, e.g., if created by xelatex.
One PDF file printed differently on 2 different HP laser printers.


The PDF language is big enough that creators can make errors and renderers can ignore rare features.

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@Voss6371140

This is a bit of a guess, but it's possible that the 140% ratio relates to the difference between 96dpi (which I think is the default DPI of OpenOffice) and 72dpi (the default DPI of Photoshop). Which is a ratio of 1.333.

If you haven't already, try changing the DPI of your original image to 96. Don't resample it, just change its resolution.


Go to Image->Image Size
Turn off "Resample Image"
Change Resolution from 72 to 96
Click OK


Save the image and try importing it to OpenOffice again. See if that works any better.

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@Merenda852

Short answer: Never trust a .pdf viewer.

Long answer: .pdf viewers are fallible. The PDF standard is very broad and has many applications. It displays files on-screen, and also creates print-ready files. Because of this broad application of the file type, there is no single .pdf viewer that can render all kinds of files acceptably all of the time.

You could try to save the image with different settings, have a source image of different sizes, or other solutions. You will always find a viewer and / or OS that renders it incorrectly. That's life.

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@Berryessa866

If your image looks as it should when you zoom in there is nothing wrong with your image. OpenOffice may be resampling or compressing your image, but if it looks as it should at a higher zoom level then I assume that's not the problem. The problem is how Adobe Reader is rendering your image.

It's physically impossible for any image to render perfectly at any scale. Your image is made up of pixels, if you scale your image by any non-integer amount those pixels don't align with the new scale and you get those jagged edges (aliasing), which are especially noticeable on thin lines.

At a guess, the 140% zoom in Reader is probably showing your image at 100% (or some integer scale) in regards to the images actual pixel size and your display. This may be due to you scaling the image in OpenOffice or just due to Reader basing its scale on the physical dimensions of the PDF not the pixel dimensions of the image inside that PDF.

If this is destined for print you shouldn't need to worry about it, the issue is a screen display problem that won't translate to a printer.

One thing to check is Readers rending preferences to see if anything there is affecting the quality. (Preferences > Page Display > Rendering). I don't have Reader installed here so I'm not sure but I know there are font rendering options there.

Regarding your workflow, you can export a PDF directly from Photoshop so there's no need to use OpenOffice for that. A more usual workflow would be exporting a PDF or high res TIFF from Photoshop and using InDesign or some other page layout software to put everything together.

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