Exporting to high-res .pdf
I notice that while Inkscape offers a "save to .pdf" option, there's no way to specify dpi. I'd like to be able to have 300dpi .pdf images.
What workarounds are available?
Kat Tanaka Okopnik escribió:
I notice that while Inkscape offers a "save to .pdf" option, there's no way to specify dpi. I'd like to be able to have 300dpi .pdf images.
What workarounds are available?
Only one I've been able to do is to first export to .png and then insert that into an OpenOffice.org's Impress document, export from the file menu to PDF and be able to change there the image's DPI and compression method.
On 2007-May-20 , at 08:35 , Gian Paolo Mureddu wrote:
Kat Tanaka Okopnik escribió:
I notice that while Inkscape offers a "save to .pdf" option, there's no way to specify dpi. I'd like to be able to have 300dpi .pdf images.
What workarounds are available?
Only one I've been able to do is to first export to .png and then insert that into an OpenOffice.org's Impress document, export from the file menu to PDF and be able to change there the image's DPI and compression method.
If I understand you well this means that you export the whole Inkscape document to PNG and then transform it to PDF with OpenOffice Impress (you could do the same with the Gimp or ImageMagick's convert actually). If this is what you do, you could keep it in PNG instead of turning it to a PDF, it won't change a thing. PDF is a vector based format and PNG is a raster format: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_Graphics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raster_Graphics The advantage of exporting to PDF from Inkscape's SVG (which is also a vector format) is that you keep the vector information (i.e. when you zoom in, the lines stay sharp). If you export the SVG to a raster format (PNG here), no matter in which format you convert the PNG afterwards, you won't get the vector information back, you will still end up with just a bunch of pixels. In fact, the raster/vector difference is complicated by the fact that you can include some raster images in a vector based format. For example you can include some raster images in an Inkscape document. And what you do in your PDF conversion is exactly that also: you just include a raster image (a bunch of pixels) in a vector document (the PDF), but that does not turn it into vector in any way. I hope this helps. Maybe the FAQ in Inkscape's wiki need to be expanded a bit about this: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/FAQ#What_is_vector_graphics.3F
Cheers,
JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/
jiho escribió:
If I understand you well this means that you export the whole Inkscape document to PNG and then transform it to PDF with OpenOffice Impress (you could do the same with the Gimp or ImageMagick's convert actually). If this is what you do, you could keep it in PNG instead of turning it to a PDF, it won't change a thing. PDF is a vector based format and PNG is a raster format: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_Graphics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raster_Graphics The advantage of exporting to PDF from Inkscape's SVG (which is also a vector format) is that you keep the vector information (i.e. when you zoom in, the lines stay sharp). If you export the SVG to a raster format (PNG here), no matter in which format you convert the PNG afterwards, you won't get the vector information back, you will still end up with just a bunch of pixels. In fact, the raster/vector difference is complicated by the fact that you can include some raster images in a vector based format. For example you can include some raster images in an Inkscape document. And what you do in your PDF conversion is exactly that also: you just include a raster image (a bunch of pixels) in a vector document (the PDF), but that does not turn it into vector in any way. I hope this helps. Maybe the FAQ in Inkscape's wiki need to be expanded a bit about this: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/FAQ#What_is_vector_graphics.3F
Cheers,
JiHO
Yes, well not exactly... I'm conscious of the differences of Raster and Vector graphics. I only export those elements I want to fine tune. If anyone uses Linux, then using Scribus is another possibility, which means a better PDF exporter than that of Inkscape's native one, which then means no need for GIMP, and direct manipulation of the SVG within Scribus itself, as it supports the format (I ignore if inkscape specifics are lost, like blur effects and the like) when manipulating directly the SVG within scribus. Another way to do this, is to export image portions to a separate raster format in a higher DPI modify as needed in GIMP, then export or save-as another SVG the text elements, and compose the final document in Scribus (much better way than using OO.o as intermediary) then fine-tune the PDF options within Scribus. I did not mention this earlier, as I did not know if the OP used Windows or Linux, as Scribus is only available (AFAIK) to Linux and POSIX Unices.
On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 08:57:49PM -0500, Gian Paolo Mureddu wrote:
Yes, well not exactly... I'm conscious of the differences of Raster and Vector graphics. I only export those elements I want to fine tune. If anyone uses Linux, then using Scribus is another possibility, which means a better PDF exporter than that of Inkscape's native one, which then means no need for GIMP, and direct manipulation of the SVG within Scribus itself, as it supports the format (I ignore if inkscape specifics are lost, like blur effects and the like) when manipulating directly the SVG within scribus. Another way to do this, is to export image portions to a separate raster format in a higher DPI modify as needed in GIMP,
If I understand this correctly, for my purposes, saving to something like .png and converting, or saving to .eps, are better options...
Yes?
then export or save-as another SVG the text elements, and compose the final document in Scribus (much better way than using OO.o as intermediary) then fine-tune the PDF options within Scribus. I did not mention this earlier, as I did not know if the OP used Windows or Linux, as Scribus is only available (AFAIK) to Linux and POSIX Unices.
Scribus is actually available for Linux, Mac (OSX) and Wind0ws.
On 2007-May-21 , at 04:13 , Kat Tanaka Okopnik wrote:
On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 08:57:49PM -0500, Gian Paolo Mureddu wrote:
Yes, well not exactly... I'm conscious of the differences of Raster and Vector graphics. I only export those elements I want to fine tune. If anyone uses Linux, then using Scribus is another possibility, which means a better PDF exporter than that of Inkscape's native one, which then means no need for GIMP, and direct manipulation of the SVG within Scribus itself, as it supports the format (I ignore if inkscape specifics are lost, like blur effects and the like) when manipulating directly the SVG within scribus. Another way to do this, is to export image portions to a separate raster format in a higher DPI modify as needed in GIMP,
If I understand this correctly, for my purposes, saving to something like .png and converting, or saving to .eps, are better options...
Yes?
No ;). If you want PDFs which are real PDFs (i.e. with the elements you draw in Inkscape that stay vectors) with included images at 300dpi you should follow the advice of Horvath Andras in an earlier email: tweak your raster images *before* importing them in Inkscape so that they have their final size and a 300dpi resolution, import them in your Inkscape document, scale them to their correct size (when Inkscape imports images, it scales them so that they have 90dpi resolution, so you 300 dpi images will appear very large and you have to scale them down to their real size to have them at 300dpi), draw whatever you want to draw, and then export the whole drawing to PDF directly in Inkscape. Just to be sure that this is what you need, what do you want to use these PDFs for?
[...]
Cheers,
JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/
On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 08:18:08AM +0200, jiho wrote:
On 2007-May-21 , at 04:13 , Kat Tanaka Okopnik wrote:
If I understand this correctly, for my purposes, saving to something like .png and converting, or saving to .eps, are better options...
Yes?
No ;). If you want PDFs which are real PDFs (i.e. with the elements you draw in Inkscape that stay vectors) with included images at 300dpi you should follow the advice of Horvath Andras in an earlier email: tweak your raster images *before* importing them in Inkscape so that they have their final size and a 300dpi resolution, import them in your Inkscape document, scale them to their correct size (when Inkscape imports images, it scales them so that they have 90dpi resolution, so you 300 dpi images will appear very large and you have to scale them down to their real size to have them at 300dpi), draw whatever you want to draw, and then export the whole drawing to PDF directly in Inkscape.
I just created a test document with only text, and saved it to "CairoPDF" (I'm running Inkscape 0.45+devel, built May 18 2007). When I view the resulting .pdf file using Xpdf, the letters with no curves appear fine, but the curves are all badly aliased - no matter what magnification I view it at.
What am I missing here?
Just to be sure that this is what you need, what do you want to use these PDFs for?
Occasionally I have clients who need last-minute printing (i.e. finished at 3am, printed by morning) and thus those files end up going to Kinko's. Unfortunately, Kinko's prefers to have images prepped as .pdf, and thus the necessity of a 300dpi file...
Kat Tanaka Okopnik wrote:
I notice that while Inkscape offers a "save to .pdf" option, there's no way to specify dpi. I'd like to be able to have 300dpi .pdf images.
What workarounds are available?
Inskcape save the images in the pdf with their original resolution. It doesn't downsample them. So the solution is to convert the images to 300 dpi before you save the pdf from Inkscape. I'd suggest you to do this with Gimp giving it the image's final size and 300 dpi.
Andras
participants (4)
-
Gian Paolo Mureddu -
Horvath Andras -
jiho -
Kat Tanaka Okopnik