Techwalla may earn compensation through affiliate links in this story. Learn more about our affiliate and product review process here.
Adobe Acrobat offers a series of presets that a user can choose when creating a PDF. These presets are designed to produce the best results for the intended purpose of a PDF, be it printed on a desktop printer, viewed electronically or sent to a commercial printer. Each preset balances the quality of the file output with how it's going to be ultimately viewed. You can select these presets when exporting a file as a PDF out of document design programs.
Video of the Day
Using the setting "High Quality Print" when creating a PDF optimizes the document for quality output on desktop printers and proofing devices. This setting downsamples grayscale and color images to 300 pixels per inch for any images set at a higher resolution. For monochrome images, the setting downsamples to 1200 PPI. This setting does not change RGB color images to CMYK. It flattens transparency in artwork to reduce the file size and embeds subsets of all fonts used. This setting is suitable for files submitted to quick-print shops.
Video of the Day
The "Press Quality" preset creates files for high-quality commercial presses. These outputs can be used for digital printing or for creating color separations to send to an imagesetter or platesetter. This setting downsamples images to the same resolution as the high-quality print setting, but includes all information in the file needed by a commercial printer to produce an accurate print. It converts colors to CMYK and preserves transparency, and like the high-quality print setting, it embeds subsets of all fonts. This setting produces the highest quality of file reproduction and results in a large file size. However, you can't assume this is the setting a commercial printer wants for submitted PDFs. Printers often require a more specific preset.
