I have a large Pages document full of 300 dpi images. When I export this to pdf (or to Word), the images are changed to 72dpi.
Quesion: how can I create a pdf with my original 300 dpi images?
Thank you.
iMac (27-inch, Late 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)
Peter,
Affinity Designer (mine is v1.5.5 of this post) will open every page of a PDF on its own layer if you take the default open, or you can explicity request a single, specific page from the total.
The following is a 179 page text-only PDF. I took the all pages option. The thumbnails are reduced in magnification to fit the default AD window. A single page from this collage can be selected, and zoomed to 100%.
A single page request from a 3-page PDF appears normally:
and selecting an image reveals AD's perception of its size and resolution. Preview thinks that this image is 180 DPI. The PDF was created by saving, rather than export, and the original Pages document was created with Pages v5.2.2, and later edited with v5.6.1.
Yes, I have tried all the options under Print: pdf. I have about 700 images (mostly) PNG, none with drop shadow, border, or transparency. All the images get reduced to 72 dpi or maybe 115pf. (Yes, I select BEST image quality.)
The reason this is a problem in that Kindle PRINT books require you to upload a pdf, but also require images to be at least 300 dpi. So when I upload my pdf, Kindle complains that my images aren't acceptable.
Kindle is also supposed to accept .doc or .docx or rtf. But when I export to any of these formats from Pages (a) the images get reduced and (b) Kindle webpage reports "error" trying to upload any of these formats (except pdf).
I have tried using PdfPenPro, but exporting (Print:pdf etc) also reduces the images to 72 dpi, and PdfPenPro will not import directly from Pages.
I just dragged and dropped two, confirmed 300 dpi images into Pages v5.6.2 (El Capitan 10.11.6), and Pages v6.1.1 (Sierra 10.12.4) that were mixed with one page of text. In either case, I went the File menu : Print : PDF : Save as PDF route.
I opened each of these PDF in Affinity Designer 1.5.5. On El Capitan, AD showed the images at 385 dpi, and on Sierra, both were 404 dpi. Either Preview was under reporting the 300 dpi, or something is going on either with Pages save as PDF, or within Affinity Designer.
The net is that a 300 dpi image that goes into Pages (pick your version), and without any Pages specific artifacts, emerges via the Save as PDF method described above without loss of image resolution. It would also suggest that something else is going on in that Pages document of yours, and that unknown is having an effect on your generated PDF image resolution.
The other DPI confirmation approach would be to launch LibreOffice (2017-05-08, v5.3.2) and open the PDF created by Pages — via the Open menu. Once the PDF is opened, select View menu : Page Pane to get a thumbnail gallery. You can then right-click on any image, and choose Edit with External Tool.
By default, the Edit with External Tool will open the PDF image in Preview. In Preview, you will need to View menu : Customize Toolbar..., and drag/drop the Info icon onto the Preview Toolbar. Now, you can click this Info button and see the DPI of the image within the PDF.
Affinity Design opens my pdf as 700 separate tiny icons. I can select a single icon. But I cannot find any "information" (or similar) command.
In Libre Office, I could only inspect two of my 700 pages, because only two are pictures without text. These were each 300 dpi in Pages, but Libre Office/Preview reports they are now 72 dpi.
My Pages document is about 685 MB. However I export this (either of any of the pdf exports; or as .doc or .docx or rtf), the resulting file in around 140 MB -- and the images are reduced to 73 or 115 MB or theerabouts.
In short, I cannot figure out how to export my Pages document without encountering so much compression that it becomes useless for Kindle-print book.
Any images affected by transparency, which includes, shadows, reflections, 3D etc will be rendered at 72dpi on export to pdf.
Affinity Designer, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop can open only one page at a time from pdfs.
Peter
Thumbs up for Affinity Designer. 🙂
Thanks for the correction Viking. Been a while since I looked. I am still much much faster in Adobe Illustrator, and there are some really quirky things in AD's selections and file handling that I still have not got my head around.
Peter
Please, what does "affected by transparency" mean?
My 300dpi images (almost all of them PNG) which get reduced to 72-115 dpi include: scans of textual charts; screen grabs of frames from dvds; scans of photos; groups of text converted in Photoshop from clipboard to PNG.
So I assume that all of these (or every conceivable image?) is "affected by transparency"?
But I still have no idea what "affected by transparency" means.
Am I to conclude from your information that there is no way to export a document from Pages without reducing the resolution of images?
Thank you.
How did you conclude "from your information that there is no way to export a document from Pages without reducing the resolution of images"? I did not say that at all.
Anything affected by transparency is any bitmapped image that has transparency set itself or overlaps something with transparency, such as shadows, reflections, art frames and 3D charts. Those all get reduced to 72 dpi in the pdf.
Everything else does not.
png files are not a good option for Print. They are excessively large RGB files.
cmyk jpeg files of a reasonably high standard are best for photo style images. For strictly black and white images, use high resolution .tiff files. Best is vector cmyk.
What is most important is what real size resolution the images are. Merely inserting a 300dpi image into a document does not make it 300 dpi at real size. When images are enlarged or reduced in Pages they change resolution. If they are enlarged in Pages they lose resolution, if they are shrunk in Pages they become higher resolution.
Peter
Thank you, Peter.
I prepare my images in PhotoShop. I make them 6 inches wide (usually) and 300 dpi. I don't adjust their size in Pages. Aside from this, please, what else should I do to set "real" size?
PNG vs jpeg: But this doesn't relate to Pages reducing images to 72dpi, right? I prefer PNG because I work mosty in video, where jpegs are dangerous because they have two fields and often don't keep the field you select (which can turn a smile into a sneer) or flicker.
Transparency: none of my images overlap anything else, nor have shadows, reflections, frames or 3D.
All of my images are reduced in dpi when I export from Pages, no matter which export route. The Pages document is 680MB, the export versions are 120-150MB. (There are 700+ images in 733 pages.)
When you upload to Kindle (print, not ebook), your next step is "Launch Preview (NOT the Apple application)." In Launch Preview Kindle indicates which images are less than 300 dpi, and about 200 of mine are 72-115 dpi, even though in PhotoShop/Pages they were 300dpi and 6 inches wide.
Kindle upload permits pdf, doc, docx, rtf, html. Not Pages, alas. But after several dozen tries, the only format that reaches the Preview stage is pdf. In all others, "error" is cited.
With the image selected in Pages, visit the Arrange tab. In its Size section, you will see a button — “Original Size.” This will ensure that your six inch, 300 dpi images remain true to the Photoshop dimensions and resolution intent.
Also, how many of your images in Photoshop also had an alpha channel mask that got exported to those .png as a transparency layer? If that happened, there is the smoking gun in your Pages to PDF image resolution issue.
You need to look at what is it about those 200 images that is different from all the others.
That jpegs have two fields is news to me, they are just images broken into 16x16 pixel grids with an algorythm applied to reduce less important detail. Exactly what is being done in the video in mpeg.
JPEG File Interchange Format (JFIF) have multiple fields to allow zoom into different resolutions.
Nearly all PC operations are built around a small standard set of formats, because MsWindows has trouble dealing with exceptions. Whilst png is a standard it is less supported than jpegs. Why not experiment and convert the problem pngs to high quality jpegs and see if the problem goes away?
Peter
Have you tried File menu : Print : PDF : Save as PDF? Any 300 dpi image that has a drop shadow, border, or transparency will be reduced to 72 dpi by Pages.
AD Video tutorials may help.
pages how to export pdf with 300dpi?
