PDF's in containers print terrible.

[mikekl]

I have a simple database that I have imported PDF's (Scanned documents with signatures etc.) into containers. When I print from Adobe Reader, the PDF's look great, but when I print from FMP (every version) they are incredibly bitmapped. Any advice?

[mikekl]

I just noticed that the container has a 'play' bar like a quicktime movie, is that normal? Also, when I click in the container, the resolution increases and when I click outside the container the resolution reduces again. Is that normal too? I'd hate to think that anyone who wants to read the info in the container has to click it first to get a legible copy.

[pjdodd]

Hello

As your PDFs are scanned the resulting preview will look bad (raster graphics and all that jazz). I use PDFs in my database but being mostly vector graphics and text the preview and print are both great. I don't have to click in or out of the field.

Some questions for you:

1) Did you create screen res or press ready PDFs?

2) Did you Save As.. PDF from say Photoshop? If so, are your images greater than 200dpi?

3) What printer are you printing to?

4) Have you checked your print options? (unlikely that will make a difference but worth a look)

[mikekl]

Okay, I did some testing this morning and found out a few things. First, some background. I have an existing database of jobs. I am scanning in the shipping docs so that I have signatures and such for verification. I scan these things in in groups for workflow ease because I can have just about anybody do that. To test this database, I simply built a quick database with a container field and then "Imported" the whole folder of pdf scans, and that's when they looked terrible. Today, I took your advice and rescanned a doc at 300dpi and saved it as a pdf. The file size was the same OR LESS than my previous scans, so I am confident they had enough resolution on the previous scans too. Since I only had 1 file to import this morning, I created a new record in the existing database and then right clicked on the container field and chose "insert picture". It looked great, so I took the same file and tried the other route of using the "Import File" command from the file menu. This time it looked terrible, so I am concluding that the "Import File" command works differently than the "Insert Picture".

Two different methods of importing the data created two different results.

[pjdodd]

To quote from Filemakers own help pages:

"Inserting files of any type into fields.

You can use a container field to store files of any type, such as PDF files, word processing files, or any other file type that you want to track. When you insert a file, FileMaker Pro displays the file's icon and name in the container field, BUT NOT THE ACTUAL CONTENT."

The reason you were seeing rough content was FM was showing you the PDF icon thumbnail and it was not acutally showing you the content.

Also I'm curious to know why you are saving image files as PDFs when surely jpegs/gifs are more efficient.

[mikekl]

Filemakers help pages are correct in their explanation of inserting "files", but what is the definition of a "file"? If you right click in a container field, you get 4 options: picture, quicktime, sound and lastly, file, so at least on the surface, it seems that FMP defines a "picture" and a "file" differently. What are those differences? When is a picture not a file and when is a file not a picture? Is a PDF a picture or is it a file?

I am using PDFs because they are smaller and since I may be emailing the contents of the container, they will have more universal acceptance over large files that might get bounced by email systems. I did a few test scans and found that a Jpeg at 100% quality would give me a 652kb file, at 50% quality, the file would be 284k and a PDF would be 48k. Because this is a paper archiving solution, I will potentially have tens of thousands of these files so I need them to be as small as possible.

[dkemme]

I too have had problems with PDF's, particularly multipaged PDF's. Fenton has a great solution to show the first page of a PDF and then open PDF in a viewer to see remainder of pages and for printing, but I preferred to stay in Filemaker and am using TIFF's instead. JPEGs would be better for compression but alas not an easy option for my fax and scanning software.

[pjdodd]

When is a PDF File not a picture?

Its a PDF FILE when....

A PDF File contains all the fonts, vector graphics, colour information and essential postscript junk necessary to generate film/laser output (usually of a high enough quality). PDF Files are ONLY generated via postscript/eps files through Acrobat Distiller or a similar plug via a DTP program.

It's a PDF Picture when...

Saving an image file from Photoshop as a PDF means its a picture with a PDF wrapper so Acrobat can open it. In other words, the PDF HAS NOT been generated by Acrobat Distiller or a PDF plug in from a DTP program.

Compression of PDFs (Files and pictues) can vary greatly as within Distiller numerous options exist to compress, downsample and embed the data. A 14MB RGB file can compress it down to around 50K as well....but the quality is crap (despite Acrobats lush on screen rendering.) Distiller's compression techniques are JPEG/ZIP with a little added downsampling functions and IF you only need to look at your files on screen its terrific. Try printing them and it's just plain bad.

I cannot emphasise enough the fact that compressing your images in jpeg format OR PDF format produces the same results in terms of quality. I understand that PDFs get through virus scanners on email servers but I wouldn't rush in to get them as small as possible without checking quality.

As for FM defintion of a file, its clear they meant that apart from common file types (images, sounds) there are certain files that are needed to be embedded and worked with beyond FM and have provided for that. Inserting a file as a file enables this greater functinality, so I believe. Where as inserting a file as a picture declares that its an image to be viewed and used primarily within FM. As the manual dont say much on this, I'm guessing!

Lastly I am annoyed that multipage PDFs are only viewable from the first page within FM. I wonder if this is fixed in V8?

[Fenton]

A multi-page PDF is viewable in FileMaker, if you use Insert Quicktime. It has the movie controls at the bottom if you click into the container. A little awkward, but quite readable. It prints like a low res picture though, only the 1st page, so that's out.

8 has vastly improved the way it looks when you use Insert Picture. In 7 it wasn't anti-aliased (on my machine anyway), so it printed fine, but looked jagged and anemic on screen. In 8 it looks fine and prints fine. But that's still only 1 page.

So there's no easy way to view AND print a multi-page PDF. I can think of a couple non-easy ways. The first would be to Insert Quicktime, to view, then Export Field Contents to print (all the pages, looks good). This should be cross-platform, though I haven't tried on PC.

The second would be to use AppleScript and another tool or application to split the original PDF into pages,* then Insert one at a time (into a repeating container field). This would be more trouble, but could be automated. It would have the advantage that you could read the thing without having to use the movie tools (which work, but are a little clunky; of course you'd have build your own buttons/navigation for pages). You would also be able to print straight from FileMaker, without Export Field Contents. You would have the 10 pages limit however. (I haven't tried this, but it seems possible.)

*Acrobat, PDFpen, joinPDF command line tool (also splits pages; I haven't tried it)

[dkemme]

Why not scan into one file per page (JPG, TIFF) and then import into a table (Pages) with one container per record. Then create another table (Document) that the pages can be linked to?

[pjdodd]

I'm afraid I copped out of the multipage PDF problem by creating a script that opens the PDF in Acrobat....thus allowing easy and accurate viewing and printing.

Acrobat reader is free (although I've got the Pro version) and when working with a lot of PDFs I didn't want to waste my time with FM half-baked setup.

[MerlinWannaBe]

Previous statement: (09/29/05 04:05 PM - Post#177539

In response to dkemme

I'm afraid I copped out of the multipage PDF problem by creating a script that opens the PDF in Acrobat....thus allowing easy and accurate viewing and printing...)

Can you provide detail on how you built the script to open PDF's in Acrobat? I'm assuming you stored the PDF in a container filed & then ran it externally. Having trouble getting this to work...

Thanks!

[dkemme]

Fenton has a great discussion on this, search back a bit.

[pjdodd]

The PDFs are stored as a link, not embedded.

The script calls a perform Applescript function with the following code (it assumes the that PDFs have been created by Acrobat, otherwise Preview will open them)

try

copy cell "pdf_container" of current record to filePath

tell application "Finder" to open filePath

on error errmsg

activate me

display dialog errmsg

end try