[OS X TeX] Preparation of illustrations for press

[Bernhard Barkow]

On 2008-03-25, at 13:17, Adam Fenn wrote:
> On 25 Mar 2008, at 11:49, Bruno Voisin wrote
>
>> Does it get better if you save as pngs at the same resolution in  
>> Photoshop? pdf is primarily intended for vector content, using it  
>> for bitmap content may be the culprit here.
>
> An original photoshop file of 39.7MB saves to a pdf file of 23.7MB  
> and a png file of 21.9MB. So  png is better
> but I'm not sure that overall it will make that much difference.
>

In your original post you write that the bitmaps have a resolution of  
800 dpi at original size - more than 300dpi does not make sense for  
print production, so downsizing them will decrease the file size by  
about 85% (that is, without any visible loss on quality).

Regarding the file format, PDF encapsulates all kinds of file  
formats, as was already mentioned. Depending on the image content and  
your quality needs, using JPEG compression when saving as pdf might  
be reasonable (high-quality JPEGs are usually sufficient for printing  
photos, probably not for line art). Or save them as JPEG files from  
the beginning.
Since pdflatex (assuming you want to use pdflatex) cannot include  
TIFs, using PDF is a good choice, better than PNG simply for color  
management reasons (I don't know if profiles can be embedded in PNGs,  
and how pdflatex would handle them; apart from that, PNGs can only be  
RGB, not CMYK as far as I know).

HTH,

Bernhard