HP 5470c, Precisionscan Pro 3.1, and Saving to .PDF image qualityproblem

I have been trying to scan documents into .pdf files and maintain good
quality. I have discovered if I print the document to a .pdf file, the
quality is good. But doing it this way, I can only do one page at a time.

If I "Save to PDF", I can scan more than one page into the document, but
the quality is worse that a bad fax. I appears I do not have an option
to set the quality when the image is saved in such a way. If anyone
knows how to change this in Precisionscan Pro 3.1, please let me know.

For now, if I want better quality, I will have to print each page to a
..pdf separately and then combine them later.

I am fairly sure the scanner is not the problem, because the images are
good when either printed directly or printed to .pdf directly, but the
image saving routing in the software seems to only be able to use low
quality scans. If I save the file as a .TIF, it looks fine. So I need
to be able to tell Precision Pro to use .TIF quality when saving to a
..pdf ---

Thanks,
Clark

To do this right, you need to use Adobe Acrobat as the "front end".
With Acrobat, it works right. You don't have your settings right, and
you don't say what software is creating the PDF file (I don't think that
Precision Scan Pro itself does this ... I think you need some additional
product). And I would not recommend using TIFF for normal stuff, the
file size is too large. JPEG is fine if you don't get carried away with
the compression (there is a quality slider). Normally, for monochrome
stuff, do not scan as a "black and white" image, but rather as a
grayscale image. You need to learn how to set the highlight, lowlight
and gamma settings also. Done right, it works great with spectacular
quality (I have a 5490C and use Precision Scan Pro, but for PDF files,
go in via Acrobat (which, in turn, will invoke Precision Scan Pro).


Clark wrote:
> I have been trying to scan documents into .pdf files and maintain good
> quality. I have discovered if I print the document to a .pdf file, the
> quality is good. But doing it this way, I can only do one page at a time.
>
> If I "Save to PDF", I can scan more than one page into the document, but
> the quality is worse that a bad fax. I appears I do not have an option
> to set the quality when the image is saved in such a way. If anyone
> knows how to change this in Precisionscan Pro 3.1, please let me know.
>
> For now, if I want better quality, I will have to print each page to a
> .pdf separately and then combine them later.
>
> I am fairly sure the scanner is not the problem, because the images are
> good when either printed directly or printed to .pdf directly, but the
> image saving routing in the software seems to only be able to use low
> quality scans. If I save the file as a .TIF, it looks fine. So I need
> to be able to tell Precision Pro to use .TIF quality when saving to a
> .pdf ---
>
> Thanks,
> Clark

Barry Watzman wrote:
> To do this right, you need to use Adobe Acrobat as the "front end". With
> Acrobat, it works right. You don't have your settings right, and you
> don't say what software is creating the PDF file (I don't think that
> Precision Scan Pro itself does this ... I think you need some additional
> product). And I would not recommend using TIFF for normal stuff, the
> file size is too large. JPEG is fine if you don't get carried away with
> the compression (there is a quality slider). Normally, for monochrome
> stuff, do not scan as a "black and white" image, but rather as a
> grayscale image. You need to learn how to set the highlight, lowlight
> and gamma settings also. Done right, it works great with spectacular
> quality (I have a 5490C and use Precision Scan Pro, but for PDF files,
> go in via Acrobat (which, in turn, will invoke Precision Scan Pro).
>
>
> Clark wrote:
>> I have been trying to scan documents into .pdf files and maintain good
>> quality. I have discovered if I print the document to a .pdf file,
>> the quality is good. But doing it this way, I can only do one page at
>> a time.
>>
>> If I "Save to PDF", I can scan more than one page into the document,
>> but the quality is worse that a bad fax. I appears I do not have an
>> option to set the quality when the image is saved in such a way. If
>> anyone knows how to change this in Precisionscan Pro 3.1, please let
>> me know.
>>
>> For now, if I want better quality, I will have to print each page to a
>> .pdf separately and then combine them later.
>>
>> I am fairly sure the scanner is not the problem, because the images
>> are good when either printed directly or printed to .pdf directly, but
>> the image saving routing in the software seems to only be able to use
>> low quality scans. If I save the file as a .TIF, it looks fine. So I
>> need to be able to tell Precision Pro to use .TIF quality when saving
>> to a .pdf ---
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Clark

"you don't say what software is creating the PDF file"

Precisionscan Pro has an option to "save as .pdf". I can scan multiple
pages using that setting. Looking on the HP site seems to indicate
saving a .pdf file format is for use on the web, and perhaps it is using
a 75 dpi resolution. HP may have to "dumb it down" to keep from having
problems with Adobe. It certainly does not appear to be a full blown
PDF printer.

You say Acrobat will evoke Precision Scan Pro, so it doesn't seem that
would help my situation. Does Acrobat use a "Scan To" type operation
and accepts multiple pages? It may be doing automatically what I have
to do manually. Can you adjust the resolution on the Acrobat scans?
Basically, what steps does it take for you to scan a multipage document
using Acrobat?

Thanks for the input,
Clark

I have a 5490 and Precision Scan Pro, and I scan over 10,000 pages per
year (have scanned over 100,000 pages in the past 6 years), mostly to
PDF using Acrobat. Trust me, it will do what you want. There may be a
way to do it without Acrobat, but I've never even tried it. I have
never used the scan to PDF feature in Precision Scan Pro.


Clark wrote:
> Barry Watzman wrote:
>> To do this right, you need to use Adobe Acrobat as the "front end".
>> With Acrobat, it works right. You don't have your settings right, and
>> you don't say what software is creating the PDF file (I don't think
>> that Precision Scan Pro itself does this ... I think you need some
>> additional product). And I would not recommend using TIFF for normal
>> stuff, the file size is too large. JPEG is fine if you don't get
>> carried away with the compression (there is a quality slider).
>> Normally, for monochrome stuff, do not scan as a "black and white"
>> image, but rather as a grayscale image. You need to learn how to set
>> the highlight, lowlight and gamma settings also. Done right, it works
>> great with spectacular quality (I have a 5490C and use Precision Scan
>> Pro, but for PDF files, go in via Acrobat (which, in turn, will invoke
>> Precision Scan Pro).
>>
>>
>> Clark wrote:
>>> I have been trying to scan documents into .pdf files and maintain
>>> good quality. I have discovered if I print the document to a .pdf
>>> file, the quality is good. But doing it this way, I can only do one
>>> page at a time.
>>>
>>> If I "Save to PDF", I can scan more than one page into the document,
>>> but the quality is worse that a bad fax. I appears I do not have an
>>> option to set the quality when the image is saved in such a way. If
>>> anyone knows how to change this in Precisionscan Pro 3.1, please let
>>> me know.
>>>
>>> For now, if I want better quality, I will have to print each page to
>>> a .pdf separately and then combine them later.
>>>
>>> I am fairly sure the scanner is not the problem, because the images
>>> are good when either printed directly or printed to .pdf directly,
>>> but the image saving routing in the software seems to only be able to
>>> use low quality scans. If I save the file as a .TIF, it looks fine.
>>> So I need to be able to tell Precision Pro to use .TIF quality when
>>> saving to a .pdf ---
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Clark
>
> "you don't say what software is creating the PDF file"
>
> Precisionscan Pro has an option to "save as .pdf". I can scan multiple
> pages using that setting. Looking on the HP site seems to indicate
> saving a .pdf file format is for use on the web, and perhaps it is using
> a 75 dpi resolution. HP may have to "dumb it down" to keep from having
> problems with Adobe. It certainly does not appear to be a full blown
> PDF printer.
>
> You say Acrobat will evoke Precision Scan Pro, so it doesn't seem that
> would help my situation. Does Acrobat use a "Scan To" type operation
> and accepts multiple pages? It may be doing automatically what I have
> to do manually. Can you adjust the resolution on the Acrobat scans?
> Basically, what steps does it take for you to scan a multipage document
> using Acrobat?
>
> Thanks for the input,
> Clark