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

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.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

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.

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

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

[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...

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.

It used to be that when I created a pdf from a word or publisher document, hyperlinks worked fine. Now I cannot get them to work unless the text displayed for the link is the complete address and it all appears on one line. Why?

it used to be that when I created a pdf from a word or publisher document, hyperlinks worked fine. Now I cannot get them to work unless the text displayed for the link is the complete address and it all appears on one line. Why?

You can print to the Adobe PDF printer, but that only creates links that Acrobat or Reader recognize as such. That is the reason for needing the entire URL on one line. It is not actually an embedded link, but one created by Acrobat on the fly. With OFFICE 2013 you have two choices: 1. create the PDF with the print to Adobe PDF and then add the links in Acrobat so that they are complete or 2. I think the WORD save as PDF or XPS will create the PDF with links, but not sure. If so, that would be the quickest solution for you, but be aware of potential problems with the MS plugin.
Of course, the third option is to upgrade to XI which can be done with AA 9. You will probably not be eligible for a for an upgrade to whatever the next version will be.

Signature in pdf causes plug-in error

Created form in livedesigner ES with signature field. When I open it using Adobe X (ver 10) and use the ePad IntegriSign I get this error message:
This plug-in is intended for validating signatures signed using earlier versions of Acrobat. To sign using this version of Acrobat, use "IntegriSign for Acrobat 9.0 and later" handler.
Yes, Adobe X settings are setup accordingly. I am working with epadlink but they have ran out of suggestions.
Please help!
Patricia

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

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 weight changes when using Align to Pixel grid

When I select Align to Pixel Grid in the Transform Panel, I see line weight changes occur. I try to change the line weight in the either the Stroke or Appearance panel and it will not change, no layers locked, any ideas how to change the line weight?

Chouettecacahuete wrote:
... I noticed that the line increases from 0.5pt to 1pt mainly (although not always) on straight lines, anything with a bezier curve seems to remain as 0.5pt.
Just try this, with snap to pixel grid on, create 10 pixel long straight horizontal 1pt line with the pen or line tool. You won't be able to change the stroke weight to other than whole numbers. But if you rotate the line with only 0.01 degrees by typing this for rotation in the Transform panel, then you can change the stroke weight to 1.25 for example. When creating artworks for for screen display always verify the result with View > Pixel Preview turned on.
tonyharmer wrote:
...I only referred to Photoshop to illustrate the behaviour - vector tools aside, everything you do in Photoshop has to be whole pixels
As I said, Photoshop doesn't have snap to pixel grid feature like Illustrator. You can easily create fuzzy lines in Photoshop if you are not drawing them precisely in the middle of the pixels. To check what I'm talking about try this In Photoshop, create a new document with a very small pixel dimensions like 20 x 20 pixels and zoom to the maximum 3200% to see clearly the result. Fill the image with light gray color so you can see the pixels when View > Show Pixel grid is on. Then with black color try drawing a straight line with any tool that creates pixels like a hard brush or the line tool used in pixel mode, and try using constraints like holding Shift while dragging. You will see that unless you draw the lines exactly in the middle of the pixels it will be fuzzy and not clean. The only way to ensure not fuzzy lines in Photoshop is to turn off the anti-aliasing. You do this by unchecking the anti-alias for tools that have this option and instead of burshes use the pencil tool (which is brush without anti-aliasing). And Illustrator works the same too if you turn off Anti-aliased Artwork in its general section of the preferences and view the result with View > Pixel Preview, you don't need to have the Align to Pixel Grid on, the aliased result will be the same like in Photoshop.

Change a heavy line to a light line

i have a heavy line that came into Pages from my brothers doc resume and it appears to be a box that I put text into which show up with grips at the corners and prints a black line from one edge of the paper to the other.
does anyone know if there is a way to LIGHTEN the thickness of this line? Right now it is too thick and I tried unbolding this box but all this did was to unbold the text that was in the box.
can anyone help with this and or get me started on where I go for insterting a line such as this or what it is called in pages?
TIA

Select the line which is probably a shape.
Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) vendredi 24 février 2012
iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.3
My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

Line Weights Vary

I have several lines in the same Freehand X file. When I
select Line 1, its .5 pt. But if I change Line 2 to .5pt, it looks
heavier. The arrows at the end of the rules are different sizes.
When I drag copy Line 1, it appears as heavy as Line 2, even though
I changed nothing. What is going on? Thanks.

ddurs wrote:
> I have several lines in the same Freehand X file. When I
select Line 1, its .5
> pt. But if I change Line 2 to .5pt, it looks heavier.
The arrows at the end of
> the rules are different sizes. When I drag copy Line 1,
it appears as heavy as
> Line 2, even though I changed nothing. What is going on?
Thanks.
Have you grouped and then scaled any of the lines. Check the
object panel to
see if the group has 'Transform as Unit' checked.
Do you have multiple strokes and a fill on the same path?
There's a bug in
FHMX in which adding a new stroke and moving to the back of
other attributes
sometimes causes FH to 'forget' the stroke weights and
colors. I reported
that bug during beta testing but it was not fixed.
Judy Arndt

Line Weights

Hello,
If possible please can someone tell me how to ensure that the Line Weights Option is left unticked after saving a document.
At the moment I have to untick this each time and would like to know if it is possible to 'save' this setting as I can't seem to get this to work.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Pete

ddurs wrote:
> I have several lines in the same Freehand X file. When I
select Line 1, its .5
> pt. But if I change Line 2 to .5pt, it looks heavier.
The arrows at the end of
> the rules are different sizes. When I drag copy Line 1,
it appears as heavy as
> Line 2, even though I changed nothing. What is going on?
Thanks.
Have you grouped and then scaled any of the lines. Check the
object panel to
see if the group has 'Transform as Unit' checked.
Do you have multiple strokes and a fill on the same path?
There's a bug in
FHMX in which adding a new stroke and moving to the back of
other attributes
sometimes causes FH to 'forget' the stroke weights and
colors. I reported
that bug during beta testing but it was not fixed.
Judy Arndt

Cell Border Line Weight

I would like to use different Line Weights on spreadsheet cell borders, but no matter what Line Weight I choose from the Accents window, I always get (both visually and printed) the same Line Weight (hairline?) when I set a cell border. Am I missing something?

I didn't enter the system details because the problem appeared on all the (different) systems I tried: iBook G4 (OS X 10.3.8), iMac G4 (OS X 10.3.9), iMac G5 (OS X 10.4.?), AppleWorks 6.2.7 and 6.2.9. I understand the need in general, but since this problem persisted across all these platforms, I thought that it would either be a well-known usage problem or bug (even though my best efforts could find no mention of it).
Thanks for your response.
Pete

Signature in PDF appears too heavy (line weight)

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