Acrobat help urgent!!!!!!!!

[tracydiaz]

this is not a smoothing problem...i have those boxes selected already in Acrobat preferences.
but it always happens unless I am viewing a PDF exported from Freehand 10 in Acrobat 5.
In Acrobat 6 and 7 however, all of the vertical strokes, like the letter "L" and "I" and so on- they are all thickened by 2 times their normal weight.
It is very obvious and looks bad.
I have seen this on PC's also- at least with files I am creating as PDF's out of Freehand 10 and send out to clients.

Can anyone help?
Today it is urgent.
Is it the fault of Freehand, or Acrobat bug or what?

[ElDiabloConCaca]

How do the files print? Do they still exhibit the same stroke-thickening?

Also, is the stroke-thickening prevalent when you zoom in to, say, 200% or more?

I've noticed that different versions of Acrobat/Acrobat Reader do different things to the display of certain items... could it just be artifactual, and the PDF itself is correct when printed?

Can you provide a sample PDF that exhibits this problem so we can take a look at it?

[tracydiaz]

Diablo- It IS artifactual. When you zoom in the strokes are fine and yes, they print just fine. Unfortunately, when clients view the pertinent document, they sometimes think there is something wrong with the art itself. Rather than have to explain this each time, and for an important upcoming presentation as well, it would be nice to know how to fix this so that I don't have that to worry about. Seeking perfection maybe, I admit so.
Especially in light of my expertise being typography...it looks a bit strange to the uneducated Acrobat viewer. Any thoughts?

Thanks SO much.
Tracy

[tracydiaz]

I think I posted my first reply to my posting and not directly to you? please take a look at that posting.

here are a couple of pages that will probably come out with this issue on your end- as they do on mine. However, if viewed in Acrobat 5, they render beautifully.

check out the "l" in Atlantix on page one.
The name on the business card (Glenn) on page 2 and so on...

thanks.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Ah, yes, I do see it. It doesn't occur when viewing the PDFs with Apple's Preview, but I do see it when using Acrobat 7 Professional. Strange.

I narrowed it down to Acrobat's "Smooth line art" preference under the "Page Display" preferences. If you turn it off, then the smoothing is gone and everything looks ok... well, except for the fact that it's all jagged from not being smoothed anymore...

It seems that any "geometrically perfect" letter, like an "l", that doesn't need anti-aliasing (since there's no curves), is getting some sort of bold effect on them...

Since it's recognizing the text as line art instead of a font, I assume that you did a "Convert Text to Paths" in Illustrator. If so, can you try bringing up a version that doesn't have the fonts converted to outlines, and make a PDF out of that? I figure that if perhaps it sees the "l" is a font, it'll smooth it like a font, instead of smoothing it like line art, and it may help.

[Natobasso]

Acrobat preview is very rough because the file is optimized for printing and not necessarily for screen, unless you choose that in the RIPing process.

Just send them a jpg with the pdf for them to view.

Just looked at the design, and I'd watch out on the letterhead not to use so dark a gray for the background. Black type won't show up on top of it.