Lightroom 3 Slide Show Quality Issues Anyone?

Question

I am experiencing slideshow quality issues with LR 3.2 using Canon 5D MKII 21 Mp RAW files. My Canon Digital Rebel 6 Mp RAW files produced high-quality slideshow PDFs using LR1 and LR2. The 5DMKII RAW files produce soft PDF imaging, regardless of preview rendering or slide show export settings in LR3, and I HAVE TRIED EVERYTHING! I then went back and tried doing a LR3.2 slideshow PDF with my Digital Rebel 6Mp files and they are much higher resolution, regardless of the settings in LR 3.2 – The exact opposite of my 5DMKII slideshows. Go figure, the 6Mp images are superior in LR 3 slideshow than the 21Mp 5DMKII images!
I developed a simple work around that improves the quality of slideshow PDFs when using larger Mpixel file images:
1)      Select the images you want use for your slideshow and export them to JPEG, sRGB, 80-100% Quality, Resize to fit: 1536 x 1024 Resolution, NO Output Sharpening
2)      Import the 1536 x 1024 JPEG files and place them into a collection, sort their order, and add caption or title information if needed.
3)      Open the collection in Slideshow Module and select a template you like, or create your own custom template.
4)      Play the slideshow and let it create previews when prompted. Adjust slideshow template settings until happy with the layout.
5)      When finished with the slide show template, save as it as a ‘New Template’ for future use.
6)      Next select ‘Export PDF Slideshow,’ Quality 80-100, Width 1600, Height 1200, and Save.
7)      View the slideshow ‘Full Screen’ in PDF reader. It should have much higher resolution than normal slideshow export when using > 8 Mp files.
It takes a few extra steps, but not much additional time to create slideshows using this method.
Adobe must be aware of this problem, and probably does not apply sharpening to files >8Mp for PDF slideshow export to correct for over sharpening of Portrait images. This is just a guess! If you export RAW images to full size JPEGs and use these JPEG files to create a PDF slideshow, the Portrait images will look over-sharpened in Adobe reader! Using my work around process, the landscape and portrait images appear fairly uniform in sharpness, even though the portrait images are 2/3 the resolution of the portrait images ( 1024 x 683 versus 1536 x 1024). This is one of the issues Adobe needs to correct with the Slideshow Module PDF Export program module.
That must be hard to do! Let’s see, who is the developer of Acrobat and PDF format…Oh I forgot it’s ADOBE! As a 45-year veteran of the computer technology industry I've seen worse things, but this is very disappointing when you consider Lightroom is now a “mature” version 3 generation program! Yes, Separate slideshow programs are available, but why should you need to use one if all you want is “basic” slideshow capability!

Answer 1

After much trial and error I discovered using the 'Widescreen' template provided in the slideshow module provides very sharp imaging for PDF export. I haven't tried video export, but I would assume it is similar. I cannot explain why this is, because even when I change the guides from 0px to say 60px (i.e. no longer widescreen fill) the images are sharper than using any other template.
Try using 'Widescreen' template. Then try adjusting the guides using 'Widescreen’ template, and save as a new user template. I have no idea why it makes a difference, but it does!