HumbleChief Posted October 27, 2015 Share Posted October 27, 2015 I have had many, many problems with PDF's in Chief over many versions. Slow, Slow, Slow, when viewing page to page. Slow to print. Overwhelms my printer's memory and prints only partial files/PDF's so I have reduce the resolution. Any PDF printed higher than 144 DPI chokes everything if I have large PDF's (full page) in the layout - painful at best. So... my PDF utility, Foxit PDF, has a feature - convert to image. Hit the button save to a new file name. Now everything is a PNG which loads at least 10 times faster page to page in Layout, prints PDF's (now PNG's) without sections missing and doesn't overwhelm my printer, without any noticeable degradation in quality. Sweet. Hope that helps someone else. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kMoquin Posted October 27, 2015 Share Posted October 27, 2015 Good tip Larry - thanks. I've struggled with PDF files slowing things down as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted October 27, 2015 Author Share Posted October 27, 2015 Somewhere in my memory I could have sworn the Chief guys said that PDF's were converted to images in Chief. If not then I can understand the speed issues. If so then what utility are they using that's so much slower than Foxit's converter? Curious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted October 27, 2015 Author Share Posted October 27, 2015 Good tip Larry - thanks. I've struggled with PDF files slowing things down as well. Funny Kev, some people have no problems but for me they are a severe drag on my system slowing it to a crawl. Do you use a PDF utility? Foxit? Nuance? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VHampton Posted October 27, 2015 Share Posted October 27, 2015 By default, I changed the dpi to 300 (when going to print) and any embedded images are saved as PNG files. I've had pdf files files ranging close to 15 megs which is quite largge. The method above was a big help and hang ups while printing isn't as common. Just curious if that may help speed your prints up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steph_en Posted October 27, 2015 Share Posted October 27, 2015 Other than printing Chief files, I typically use Foxit Phantom & Reader day-to-day; to print from Chief, I use CutePDF Printer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted October 28, 2015 Author Share Posted October 28, 2015 By default, I changed the dpi to 300 (when going to print) and any embedded images are saved as PNG files. I've had pdf files files ranging close to 15 megs which is quite largge. The method above was a big help and hang ups while printing isn't as common. Just curious if that may help speed your prints up. Thanks Val, The png conversion is a huge time saver. I'll up my DPI back to 300 and see if things print OK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted October 28, 2015 Author Share Posted October 28, 2015 Other than printing Chief files, I typically use Foxit Phantom & Reader day-to-day; to print from Chief, I use CutePDF Printer. No printing from Foxit? Curious about that. I use it for all my PDF work, nice program. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steph_en Posted October 28, 2015 Share Posted October 28, 2015 Larry, I use Foxit Phantom for Business for linework/clean-up; I like the program, quite effective yet relatively simple. My issue w/ FPB is that it does not embed certain fonts (even though they are installed in System/Fonts). On the other hand, (free) CutePDF embeds fonts and output is at the same speed and nearly same file size as FPB. Embedding is a requirement for me, for minor text editing on the fly. ...If it weren't for the embed issue I'd set FPB as default for Chiefy-to-PDF, just simpler regards settings/defaults. Btw, past post I mention using (free) Foxit Reader for print-to-PDF, which is an error... For me, Chiefy-to-PDF using FR is much slower, up to 5x slower than either FPB or CPDF, and file size is typically 3x larger. Stephen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted October 28, 2015 Author Share Posted October 28, 2015 Thanks for the info Stephen. I have now converted 3 or 4 full page PDF's and the speed difference is night and day and makes my Layouts much, much quicker and easier to work with. HIGHLY recommended no matter how you get it done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steph_en Posted October 30, 2015 Share Posted October 30, 2015 Larry, yes Big time saver. To anyone coming along, Foxit Phantom is very quick in converting Layouts to PDF and it offers great line and shape tools (till Chiefy catches up). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyGump Posted October 31, 2015 Share Posted October 31, 2015 That Foxit seems like really good software if you are going to be manipulating PDF files all the time. It is $90.00 though. I use a free software that works quite well for converting images to PDF or PDF to images like jpg and PNG plus others. It is called PDFill and as I mentioned it is free for the tools that do this and more. You can pay for the PDF editor portion for about $20.00 if you need that too. Andy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dshall Posted October 31, 2015 Share Posted October 31, 2015 I have had many, many problems with PDF's in Chief over many versions. Slow, Slow, Slow, when viewing page to page. Slow to print. Overwhelms my printer's memory and prints only partial files/PDF's so I have reduce the resolution. Any PDF printed higher than 144 DPI chokes everything if I have large PDF's (full page) in the layout - painful at best. So... my PDF utility, Foxit PDF, has a feature - convert to image. Hit the button save to a new file name. Now everything is a PNG which loads at least 10 times faster page to page in Layout, prints PDF's (now PNG's) without sections missing and doesn't overwhelm my printer, without any noticeable degradation in quality. Sweet. Hope that helps someone else. That is a great tip, thanks Larry. Any downside? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted October 31, 2015 Author Share Posted October 31, 2015 That is a great tip, thanks Larry. Any downside? Not so far Scott. I thought I might be compromising the quality but it's fine and as long I can clearly read the PDF's (it's best for full page Title 24's and text heavy engineering specs) then I have no problem. I almost never buy software that can be had for free but the features in Foxit are well worth the money especially if you use PDF's heavily. It will add, delete, rearrange pages, annotate and a load of useful features. I think Joe uses one that might have more features but i'm really happy with Foxit. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DRAWZILLA Posted October 31, 2015 Share Posted October 31, 2015 Never have a problem with Adobe Acrobat , you can even reduce the pdf file size if you want or convert to whatever. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dshall Posted October 31, 2015 Share Posted October 31, 2015 Never have a problem with Adobe Acrobat ,...... Did you have to pay extra for the full on version or is it the free version? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DRAWZILLA Posted October 31, 2015 Share Posted October 31, 2015 I have Adobe Acrobat pro ver 10. I going to update soon. Yes it the paid version but I don't want problems. I usually get the paid versions of everything I have 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alaskan_Son Posted October 31, 2015 Share Posted October 31, 2015 ... I usually get the paid versions of everything I have +1 to that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted October 31, 2015 Author Share Posted October 31, 2015 Adobe Acrobat should be a great program especially at its cost. There are cheaper alternatives but Acrobat is the gold standard for, I hope, obvious reasons, but at a higher cost that one would expect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted October 31, 2015 Author Share Posted October 31, 2015 Did you have to pay extra for the full on version or is it the free version? Scott the free version is a basic 'reader' the full version adds many useful features. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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