Having problems with importing an EPS file into FrameMaker ...

Tue Mar 11 15:57:24 PDT 2014

A bit of a final post here for closure, and to answer Mike comments below.

1.      The original EPS was indeed vector, not bitmap.

2.      Agreed that the 1800 dpi PNG file was large.

a.      Reducing it to 300 dpi made it much smaller.

b.      Better yet: doing NO anti-aliasing for the PNG file made it smaller (works for graphics images with limited colors).

Anyway ... my experiments using the EPS file in FrameMaker are interesting learnings for me:

1.      The TIF preview shown within FrameMaker looks horrible.

a.      The reason the preview is horrible is that our designer had a tiny logo inside the Illustrator file.

b.      So, the resulting TIF preview in the EPS file has relative few pixels in it.

c.      To get the actual placed-size image, I had to expand the box size in FrameMaker, resulting in the horrible preview display.

d.      I have no idea why they built it that way - probably because EPS or AI formats are vector and it does not really matter.

2.      The display in the PDF format (within Acrobat and other PDF viewers) looks excellent.

3.      Printing the PDF from Acrobat (to any printer) is excellent.

4.      But, printing to a non-Postscript printer directly from FrameMaker is horrible.

a.      FrameMaker (or the printer driver?) apparently prints the TIF preview rather than rasterizing the EPS to the desired output resolution during printing. Yuck! :(

5.      I haven't tried printing to a PostScript printer (we have a Xerox color printer here though ... may try this test some day).

Summary conclusion:

Since I only need to output documents in PDF format (from which the printing to any printer looks excellent), I will continue to use the EPS file, as people here have recommended.

However, to get around my knee-jerk grimaces when I see that horrible TIF preview in FrameMaker (even though Robert Lauriston suggested that I would get used to it :)), I had the folks enlarge the logo in Illustrator and re-do the EPS save.

This time, the TIF preview within the EPS file is larger, so the screen display within FrameMaker does not look as horrible (although EPS only uses 8 bit TIF, but that is less of an issue for this logo).

Thanks everybody for the comments and help (particularly Tori Muir for spending time generating PDF and EPS versions of my original file that pointed me in the direction I needed to go).

Z

From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Mike Wickham
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2014 6:16 PM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Re: Having problems with importing an EPS file into FrameMaker ...

Still, I would find out if the original EPS is vector or bitmap. Logos are typically vector graphics. Vectors have the advantage of creating smaller files which are crisper in display and resize to any size without degradation.

But a PNG might be a better choice if only publishing for viewing on Web or computer, but 1800 dpi would create an excessively huge file. Remember, too, that Acrobat will typically downsample your 1800 dpi file when distilling to PDF. It is likely to end up as 300 dpi, unless you change the settings in Distiller.

Mike

On 3/6/2014 7:52 PM, Syed Zaeem Hosain (Syed.Hosain at aeris.net<mailto:Syed.Hosain at aeris.net>) wrote:
FWIW, this is just a simple 4 color corporate logo, so I am not too worried about using PNG format. As long as it shows cleanly in the output PDF of my documents (and printed output) without color artifacts, then I am good with using a PNG. At 1800 dpi rasterization, with a 1" high logo, any jaggies are non-existent.

Z

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