How do I get a high resolution pdf version of my pages document?

Here is a more detailed procedure than what I wrote earlier. It was devised before Save as … disappeared and then returned, so anyone using Lion or Mountain Lion will have to "translate."

To achieve 300 dpi resolution in drop shadows, open the ColorSync utility Filters and duplicate the Create Generic PDFX-3 Document filter. In the copy, click on the arrow to the left to open the drop-down. Then click on the next arrow, Create PDF/X-3 Document. Enter 300 in each of the boxes labeled Resolution. Save it with a new name.

When you want a 300 resolution PDF, go Print > PDF > Open in Preview > Save as… > Quartz > New Name filter > Save. (Do not use Export.)

Using this filter will give you 300 dpi resolution in drop shadows and other transparencies.

Walt

For the future seekers of the higher res PDF... What barely sufficed for my needs was the 300DPI PDF (vs. the typical 72 DPS pages wants to pass off).

What you want to do is PRINT to PDF.

To do this, go to file>print then change your paper quality to "Best" or some comparable setting.
Hit the PDF button in the bottom and save as PDF instead. This will produce a high[er] resolution image.

Hope this helps... CHEERS!

If you print to pdf it will retain the image resolution except for areas which use transparency, such as shadows, reflections and less than 100% opacity.

Transparent bitmap objects or vector objects overlapping bitmap objects are rendered at a default of only 72 dpi which is much too low for commercial print.

There are ways around this but Pages is not really a Pro application.

Peter

Thanks!

this helped me tremendously.

for me it was simple and quick.

all I had to do was hit print, select save as PDF, and change the DPI to 300

it's a magazine ad that I used to do in InDesign

things were much simpler then... ha

don't have access to the adobe products right now

making due with Pages

but, learning it can do a great deal

thanks for the info

To achieve 300 dpi resolution in drop shadows, open the ColorSync utility Filters and duplicate the Create Generic PDFX-3 Document filter. In the copy, click on the arrow to the left to open the drop-down. Then click on the next arrow, Create PDF/X-3 Document. Enter 300 in each of the boxes labeled Resolution. Using this filter will give you 300 dpi resolution in drop shadows and other transparencies.

Walt

> is there a newer solution to this since the time this thread occured?

It has been the case that if the PDF/X-3 filter was cloned, then the clone still carried the same 72dpi limit as the default. The way to get the resolution one requires was to build a PDF/X-3 filter from the bottom up.

In order to set up the filter, you should have a working understanding of an ICC ColorWorld which is how you get to preview on your display or printer what the press will produce.

Whether this is 'way too complicated' as you say, I wouldn't know. Someone on the ColorSync Users List amusingly compared this situation to bicycling. If the learner says, 'Oh, I'll fall off, I won't be able to keep my balance' then the learner will balk at hopping on a bike and begin pedalling away -:). The difference is simply that ICC ColorWorlds, like Unicode GlyphRuns, are thought of as exotic technologies the way bikes and cars were thought of a century ago. There's no particular reason that ColorWorlds and GlyphRuns aren't taught in school, except that lots of people say, 'This is way too complicated'.

/hh

Walt wrote:

> If you want 300 ppi resolution of your (bitmap) images, they must be 300 when you insert them. For the vector parts, resolution is immaterial. That's not hard.

Actually, it is.

1. To check the resolution of a TIFF or JPEG file (one image, one file), start Apple Preview and select Tools > Get Info. This will show the resolution, the colourant format (RGB, CMY, CMYK ...), the colourimetry specification (either unspecified deviceColor or specified by ICC source profile).

2. To check the resolution of a PDF or EPS file (one or more images and other objects, one file), there is no human interface in Mac OS X that lets you look at the object-oriented metainformation. You have to have third party software, and you have to have a working knowledge of the Adobe imaging architecture.

As I wrote above in this thread, it is not correct that the ColorSync Utility will always render transparency resolution at 72dpi. Transparency was introduced in Mac OS 7.5 for QuickDraw GX in 1994 and reintroduced in Mac OS X for Quartz in 2000, so it's nothing new in the screen imaging system.

However, getting from the programming operators for resolution-independent transparency in the screen imaging system to the resolution-dependency of a RIP using the Adobe imaging architecture has been a problem for eighteen years, which is a little short of the time I've spent writing in this neck of the IT woods.

PDF/X-4 supports live transparency (and layers), but a test in 2012 suggested that there is still trouble sorting out how live transparency should be rendered. PDF/X-3 does not support live transparency: you have to pre-render to the resolution of the intended printing condition (which you have to know, of course).

Finally, if you choose the PDF/X filter in the ColorSync Utility, you are informing the system that you want to save a ColorWorld complete with the ICC profile for the intended printing condition. Here you have to know what that profile is, which may or may not be the default profile offered by the default filter.

The current default profile came about after an argument between the ColorSync Users List and ColorSync engineering. On the List, we wanted a change from a default profile for the Apple Color LaserWriter to a default profile for a genuinely common printing condition.

Apple engineering then chose US SWOP as the common printing condition to which new drawing in CMYK mode as well as unmarked/untagged drawing in CMYK and drawing in CMYK mode for PDF/X would conform. However, what you buy when you buy print is by and large gamut, so if you are buying print, check if the gamut you are buying is bigger than the gamut of US SWOP, because if you send the printer PDF/X with US SWOP as OutputIntent, you have declared that you want to reduce the gamut to US SWOP regardless of the gamut the printer is offering you.

It's like choosing to write in 7-bit US ASCII = the Basic Latin Block of ISO-IEC 10646. The size of the input writing space determines what you can send, irrespective of the size of the reference/connection space and the size of the receiving/output space. You can't write Russian, because Cyrillic is far out of gamut for US ASCII. This is simple set theory, and the gamut comparison in the ColorSync Utility can be used to check the size of the writing/working space relative to the size of the space for which you select a receiving/output profile in the ColorSync Utility.

Hope this helps,

Henrik

> To achieve 300 dpi resolution in drop shadows, open the ColorSync utility Filters and duplicate the Create Generic PDFX-3 Document filter. In the copy, click on the arrow to the left to open the drop-down. Then click on the next arrow, Create PDF/X-3 Document. Enter 300 in each of the boxes labeled Resolution. Using this filter will give you 300 dpi resolution in drop shadows and other transparencies.

The ColorSync Utility will render at the resolution required by the enduser, but the caveat is that if the Generic PDF/X-3 filter is copied, the default resolution of that filter may not respect the change. If a new filter is created, the resolution required by the enduser is respected.

/hh

thedvguy wrote:

opening in Preview and saving as a JPEG

With an app like GraphicConverter you can set the resolution to whatever you want when you open and convert your pdf to a graphic format. Whether that will accomplish what you think you need to do I don't know.

thedvguy wrote:

I do use shadows. they are necessary to the style of the ad. it has never affected the outcome befofe.

That is not true.

You may only have noticed now, but the OSX/ColorSync filter that Pages uses to convert the layout always outputs transparent bitmap objects, which includes shadows, reflections and 3D charts, at 72 dpi.

Peter

Henrik it is way too complicated because Apple has made it so and offered absolutely no guidance or documentation to expalin their actions. Not only that the process is buggy. I still can't get ColorSync to reliably accept name changes or changes to the settings.

godevil88

There is an Automator script available that may do the job for you:

http://www.freeforum101.com/iworktipsntrick/viewtopic.php?t=22&mforum=iworktipsn trick

Peter

If you place a 300 dpi image in Pages, it will be output at 300 dpi (as long as there are no shadows or transparency overlapping vector objects).

If you are getting 150 dpi, that's because you put a 150 dpi image into your document.

(And, Henrik, that really isn't hard.)

> this is really a simple question that you are complicating beyond belief.

> why is that so complicated?

Well, if you want to drive a car, if you don't know about gears, clutches, and brakes, if you ask for informed advice, and if you are informedly advised of gears, clutches, and brakes, perhaps it's not the best approach to publish that you consider information about how to guide your vehicle on the road to be ... well, idiotically complicated -:). You would perhaps be better advised to listen, get hold of a book or two, and learn.

> if I create a page in PAGES and output that page as a PDF, can that PDF be 300 DPI?

> I am not putting an image in. I am creating a document and exporting as a PDF

> then opening in Preview and saving as a JPEG

> this is a simple process to get a hi res JPEG image to the printer

Sigh, Adobe PDF has no resolution per se. By definition, PDF, and PostScript from which it derives, is a co-ordinate space defined in two duodecissimal systems, US inches and US pica-points. Vector objects you define in the co-ordinate space also don't have a resolution per se, as Walt told you above.

In the page design phase, resolution comes into the picture for imported photographs. Here, if you don't place the right resolution in your originating application, in this case Pages, you don't magically get the right resolution in PDF (or PostScript, or PCL, or XPS ...).

Resolution also comes into the page design phase for a special class of vector-like objects in PDF 1.4 and higher, namely transparencies which may involve resolution-independent vector objects, resolution-dependent raster objects, or any combination of the two.

When you place a photograph for an album cover, write a title for the album on top of the photography, and apply a transparency to dim the busy photograph sufficiently that you reader is able to catch your title without studying it closely, then you have a combination of vector and raster objects in the transparency.

The PDF/X filter in the ColorSync Utility exists for two main reasons, (1) it lets you choose the ICC colour space conversion profile for the printing condition, and, (2) it lets you choose the resolution at which transparencies will be rendered when the PDF is created, not when it is consumed in the RIP.

I should probably write to advise you not to convert from PDF into JPEG, because JPEG looses detail by definition. I should probably write to advise you to choose the default TIFF format because it does not loose detail. But you would say that I am making things idiotically complicated.

Perhaps, by way of closing, you would tell us why you want to export from PDF to JPEG, and to JPEG at 150DPI to boot? I may have missed something, but I believe you and your printer wanted 300DPI?

Believe me, I appreciate that you find computing to be complicated. It is, as all agree. But it you approach the challenge in the belief that knowledge is needless, then you will find help only among the angels -:).

Best,

Henrik

You will not loose image resolution if it is 300 dpi when you import it to Pages. As said before don't you transparency or shadows as it will only show in 72 dpi. The application Preview can change the pdf to a jpg as Walt states.