PDF "line weight" issues

When exporting my document (full of graphs and charts) from Microsoft Word 2010 into Acrobat Pro as a PDF, I am having "line weight" issues upon zooming in and out of the document. Depending on whether I zoom in or out and to what extent, lines disappear, become thicker or thinner or criss-cross eachother; There seems to be no "line weight" problems when printing though. Does anyone have an answer?

Try changing the Rendering options on Preferences > Page Display. For example, make sure Smooth line art and Enhance thin lines are checked.
There will be variation in previewing line weight because of the lower resolution of a screen. On the printer, which has higher resolution, you're seeing a more accurate preview of the objects.

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PDF line weight - please help!

Hi,
When I save from InDesign as a PDF any line drawn with the pen tool/circle tool etc stay the same line weight no matter how much I'm zoomed in on the document. For example, I could zoom right out to 25% and the line thickness will still look at the same as at 150%. Is there a setting to change this?
Hope someone can help by the end of today.
Many thanks!
Will

Will sent me a PM because he's having trouble replying in the forum:
Hi, thanks.... but that is a setting in Acrobat.
The designer that I work with says that her InDesign doesn't have this line weight problem (or she has never seen this problem before), so is there a setting that I can change in inDesign?
(I tried to reply on the forum but I keep getting an error... 'You can't post a blank message')
This is not a problem in InDesign, it's a problem in the display in Acrobat (and you are the second person today to post about it). Acrobat is the place you need to be to fix it when viewing the PDF.
As far as your posting problem, are you using the web page editor, or email? Some email clients have issues. If the web page, you need a little patience sometimes for the editor screen to fully load, and then you may need to click inside the editing area to get an active cursor. Hitting Enter with a blank message area would generate that error.

.pdf line weights

hello all--
this has been bugging me for a while: vector line weights not scaling properly in .pdf's (when viewed on screen in reader, preview, etc). My workflow is usually from illustrator to indesign for layout, then export to .pdf--and the final linework always appears too heavy on screen (until zooming way into the document). To illustrate, the attached image shows linework originated in illustrator, placed in indesign on the left and the same indesign file exported to .pdf on the right-- scaled aproximately the same on screen. Any ideas much appreciated. LML

Most likely, this has to do with how Acrobat displays thin lines. It may be instructive to turn off line art smoothing in Acrobat's preferences. If your (e.g.) 1 pt lines are making it into the PDF as 1 pt lines, then there's nothing wrong with Indesign. You can verify this by opening the PDF in Illustrator and checking stroke.
Your monitor is probably 96 pixels per inch. There are 72 pts in an inch, so a half point rule viewed at whatever zoom renders 100% must be made up of 1/144th of 96 pixels or about 2/3 of one pixel. Since your monitor can only display whole pixels it rounds up. Most people want smoothing on, so they don't see blocky curves. Smoothing usually means that the edge pixels get blurred, but the edge of a 1 pixel line *is* that one pixel, so more pixels must be added. So far, we're only talking about B&W. But your monitor is color, and both Acrobat and Indesign make use of color to help out with smoothing (obviously in different ways).
In the end, if it prints correctly, then you're okay. If you're designing for display only, use thicker rules.
Ken

[ASAP] Need Help Exporting to PDF - Line weight problems (Illustrator file)

So, I've drawn some stuff in Illustrator which I've then placed in InDesign.
It all looks right on screen, but when I export the document to pdf (Adobe PDF Presets: High Quality Print) the Illustrator stuff appears to lose the line weight settings. This is easily noticeable on some really thin lines that print much thicker than they were supposed to.
I gotta be missing something when exporting to pdf... 'cause if I export to Jpeg everything comes out right. No more line weight problems! The question is: what the hell am I doing wrong???
Please, somebody help me out.
Thx!

1. How are you printing?
I'm using one of the Adobe PDF Export Presets: High Quality Print.
2. What are you using to determine the line weight?
What do you mean? I talking about the stroke size.
3. Have you tried opening the PDF in Illustrator to see what the reported line weight is?
I've tried it now and it looks just fine! Just like it was supposed to! All the line weights are correct.
4. This might just be a limitation of your printer or printer driver.
I don't think so. I have never had this problem up until now!
I'm starting to think it has something to do with some Acrobat preferences settings...

Freehand MX line weight issue?

I am having a problem seeing the difference between say a 1pt line and a .5 line when viewing and creating an illustration at 100%. The line weights look identical. If I view or edit the illustration at say 200% the line weight difference is noticable. What is going on here?
Thanks....

Freehand is based on the Postscript imaging language which uses 72 points to an inch. Freehand was written when the prevailing computer display resolution was 72 pixels per inch (72ppi).
Therefore, 1 point = 1 pixel.
To display a stroke finer than 1 pixel, Freehands’ Preview mode can’t show a partial pixel, but it does show a lighter shade of gray.
If you’re designing web images, don’t use strokes finer than 1 point (1 pixel) because they won’t display well in 72ppi raster images.
When working with very fine strokes for print or other kinds of output, I find it easiest to work to scale. Make a custom scale in your page rulers such as 4 points = 1 point (400%).
View > Page Rulers > Edit
Please keep in mind that today’s computer displays have a higher pixel density than 72ppi so 100% view in Freehand won’t be actual size.
Judy Arndt

Problems converting Powerpoint/Excel to PDF, line thickness issue

Hi,
I have been having problems with how lines in excel come out when printing using Adobe PDF or PDF Creator. In both cases the thickness of lines, while consistent in excel, comes out completely random in PDF. My PDFs go to clients and appearances are very important. The most common way for me to prepare reports is to to paste Excel spreadsheets into PowerPoint as links, adjust the size of the spreadsheet to fit the slide and print, and PDF Powerpoint document. I am using Office 2010, and Adobe Acrobat X.
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Kiki

There are two options that can think of. 1. use wider lines. 2. change the print quality to 300 or at least 600, rather then the default 1200. The problem often stems from a line being denoted in pixel width rather than point width. At 1200 dpi, the pixel width is small. That causes a problem when displayed on a screen (a print out might be fine) at 96 dpi. If you can change to point width, it will be better.
At least this gives you something to look at. It is not a new problem as already mentioned and I never pursued it well enough (partly because I am not really a WORD or Excel user).

Signature in PDF appears too heavy (line weight)

Hello,
I have excel documents which need to have an actual signature. I have scanned in my signature and have it as a TIF file amongst others. I have the full Adobe CS3 suite so I have cleaned up the sig in PS and saved it in various formats.
When I import the picture file into excel the signature looks and prints fine, but as soon as I create a PDF the line weight on the signature becomes extremely heavy and it looks awful, both on-screen and printed.
I have used the Save For Web & Devices option to create a transparent GIF from the TIF file and this also results in extremely thick line weights in the PDF only.
If I simply copy and paste the signature in from PS or AI, the line weight is fine both pre/post PDF, however the background is no longer transparent.
I have tried searching for this issue in the forums with no luck so if the answer lies under a topic I have missed I would appreciate being redirected there.
Thanks,
Dave

Hi Mike,
I need the signature to sign off on data that is sent to our clients.
As an update...
We have a couple of tablet PCs here so I have created my signature using one of these. I now have a crisp/clean image of my signature which I have saved as an EPS file. It looks great both pre/post PDF creation.
Attaching the image to a digital signature is definitely something I am going to explore.
I am still curious as to why distilling the scanned signature yields the ultra fat line weights.
Thanks,
Dave

How do I set a PDF Export Preset to force a minimum line weight on output?

How do I set a PDF Export Preset to force a minimum line weight on output? I'm currently using one that came from a printer that works great - but I can't seem to find the option when creating one myself. I have some placed Illustrator line art that is built with .25 line thickness and when I have it placed at 20% scale the lines are too thin to see in the PDF output.

There is absolutely no way to force minimum line widths within InDesign itself, certainly not as part of the PDF export process!! And even one writes a script to go through every object within an InDesign document and both validate and fix line widths less than some particular threshold, such a script would be useless against placed artwork, the contents of which are not available for manual or programmatic inspection within InDesign.
Note that one should be exceptionally careful in “fixing” hairlines, especially if you are placing vector artwork at very low magnification. It may actually be OK to let certain lines drop out. After a fixup on some content, you could end up with a messy mass of lines.
- Dov

PRINT PRODUCTION - CONVERT COLORS - CHANGING LINE WEIGHTS FROM 5 PT TO 1 PT - BIG PROBLEM

I've had three jobs in the past months from customers. Most are created in Indesign with a variety of graphics and illustraitions (Illustrator).
When I made a PDF and use the PRINT PRODUCTION ==> CONVERT COLORS ==. CONVERT COLORS TO OUTPUT INTENT and SELECT PRESERVE BLACK some of the lines change.
1) Today a customer usinged 5pt stroked curved lines created in Indesign in the background of a page. Acrobat saw them as 5 pt and when I used the workflow above changed them to 1 pt.
2) Another example: a circle was drawn in Illustrator, stroked with 7 pt stroke. The graphic imported into INDESIGN. I exported to PDF and ran the above workflow and it changed the stroke to 1.
3) Another example: A customer created a honeycomb in Illustrator with a .25 pt stroke, imported graphic into page in INDESIGN. I exported to PDF and ran the above workflow and it changed the stroke to 1.
I use this workflow to change all colors from graphics to CMYK.
Why is changing line weights?

Oops!! Not until now I discover that under 'Solutions' I happened to write 'untick' where it should be 'tick'! I.e, colors SHOULD be converted to RGB in order to circumvent the problems! I.e it runs havoc in v9 when CMYK colors are NOT converted to RGB! Don't know how I came to write the opposite, but probably I started out by describing the situation where the problems are seen rather than describing how to avoid them.
Equally strange is that nobody corrected me, but perhaps the mistake was so obvious? (But whether you see problems or not might depend on what fonts you use. So, under certain special circumstances, CMYK might actually work without these reported problems.)
I am also a bit surprised that others haven't reported the issue that the PDF version set in PDF job Options isn't respected when using 'Save As PDF' and Acrobat 9? (Or maybe someone has, but I have missed it.)

"Save as PDF" stroke weight

When I save an Illustrator file as a PDF, the stroke weights often look substantially heavier than the original when the document is viewed in Acrobat or Reader. It almost looks like all strokes less than 1pt. are displaying at 1pt no matter how small they actually are. If I open the PDF in Illus. stroke weights are correct. Is there a way to fix this, possibly something having to do with transparency and/or flattening?
I often have files in which the same artwork is used both at full scale and substantially reduced, and the heavier stroke weights distort the appearance. Turning the strokes to outlines fixes the PDF display problem but screws up the source file.
Thanks, Susan

Found another related discussion thread (the phrasing was different enough it didn't show up when I searched the forum initially) which has this solution for the viewer:
"over on the indesign forum, someone suggested turning off the "enhance thin lines" option (in reader), and that does the trick. Unfortunately, other viewers won't know to do this without some instruction--- I wonder if there is some line weight threshold where the "enhance" effect kicks in?"
So I did a little test, looks like the threshold is 1pt. Made a test file with line weights of 0.1pt, .25pt, .5pt, 1pt, 2pt. At 100% zoom 1pt and everything smaller looked the same. At 400% zoom line weights looked proportional down to .25pt.
I wish there was a way to turn off the enhance thin lines option in the file itself.

Line weight problem

When I convert fonts to outline then export from CS5 AI or ID as a PDF I sometimes get distortion in vertical strokes ie. the letter L, where the line weight will appear bolder than the original font.
The PDF will print showing the bolder line weight but if I re-open the same PDF file in Illustrator the line weight is correct. I also occasionally get the same problem in line artwork.
I have Adobe Reader X and I'm working on an XP PC
Hoping someone can help - thanks.

rwl3,
You may have Align to Pixel Grid ticked in the Transform palette. You can see it when the object is selected.
If so, you probably have Align New Objects to Pixel Grid ticked in the Options.
To cure this, you may select everything and untick both.

Line Weights in Acrobat X Pro

Hi People,
When I opened a pdf attachment in email (Outlook) the "Line Weight" is very very small. When I save the attachment and then open it in the free reader the line weights are all OK.
I have tried toggling the "Line Weight" option in "View, Show/Hide, Rulers & Grids, Line Weights", but I see no change in the display.
What am I missing?
http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk297/Oldbloke49/Acrobat%20X%20Problem/Acrobat.jpg
Regards
Doug Price

Hi Anoop9178,
YES, YES! That fixed it. I am very grateful
Regards
Doug

Export or Print different line weights (like in AutoCAD)

Is there a way to Export / Print / Save As artwork with reduced line weights like you can in AutoCAD? i.e. Export a PDF and all line thickness is reduced by 50%
I have a map project that I'm working on and I want to export different sections of the map at different scales (different zoom levels) which when you export a PDF, displays line thickess differently for each level of zoom. I'd like to have it setup similar to AutoCAD where I can create a window and now matter what level of zoom, the lines are exported at the same thickness (I'd use Artboards as export windows)
Sorry if this is confusing! Is there a Plug-In or another way to do this without physically changing the line weights?

Do you want a PDF that displays different line weights depending on zoom level? Not possible. Or do you want to export a PDF with line weights different from the ones in your Illustrator file? Possible, even recordable as an action.
Once the artwork is selected, go to Object > Transform > Scale. Scale to 50% and turn on Scale Strokes & Effects, then click OK. Repeat, this time with scaling set to 200% and turn off Scale Strokes & Effects. Save or Save a Copy, then undo twice.
Here it is an an action: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5005292/Set_1.aia

Line Weight

I open a PDF of a drawing. I turn off line weights to be able to view it better. I want to save it in that format to send to someone. How do I do this? Also, can I change the preferences of the program to automatically turn off line weight?

The "fix" is in the transform panel. Click on the scale
portion of the panel with anything on the paste board selected. You
will then be able to turn on the function to scale strokes. Just
click on the box to select that option and turn it off when you
dont want strokes to scale.

Line Weight View

I have Adobe Pro 8 and make documents for other people to view in reader, i have an issue with line weights being too thick. No problem just check the line weight under the view menu in Pro, but i can't save that choice in the document and that choice is unavialble in reader. can i set the line weight default to on? or is there some way of saving my selection and allowing other people to view it the way i do?

Small is normally the problem that is an issue with the line resolution for print. For big lines, you probably will have to go back and adjust the original document. I do not think there is anything you can do in Acrobat - it is not a graphics editor.

PDF "line weight" issues

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