Apple PDF vs Distiller in OS X

[Jack Rodgers]

It's Sunday morning, 6 AM and I can't sleep so what better thing to do 
that test the Adobe PDF Printer in Acrobat 6 vs Apple's PDF printing 
via the print dialog on my Powerbook G4 667!

I used my Filemaker database that I designed to archive, catalog, 
retrieve metadata, etc. The database as I use it this AM stores the 
full jpeg in a container field, 1.5 to 3 Megs,  and I have layouts 
designed for printing to my Epson 2200 in various sizes and with text 
and the results are excellent.

First I printed a single page to PDF and compared the sizes.

Apple was fastest producing the PDF in seconds while Adobe PDF Printer 
and Distiller took minutes.

The OS X pdf is 10 Megs and the Adobe PDF Printer PDF is 72K.

Next I printed a 7 photo selection and the results where similar.

I then used Acrobats saves to web page and the differences were 
interesting. The JPEG size from the Acrobat PDF Printer were about 70K 
and 150K to 300K from the OS X PDF.

The reasons for the difference in size are due to OS X storing the 
entire file inside the PDF and Distiller creating a greatly reduced 
jpeg. I can see the difference by zooming the PDFs to 400-1600x in 
Acrobat and studying the images. The OS X PDF retains its sharpness up 
to the point of one to one pixels and then begins to pixelate, if that 
is the correct term. Amazingly the Distiller version  remains 
remarkably useful at 400 - 800 x even though it is so small in size.  I 
think Distiller worked some magic as well as Acrobat 6 since I can see 
anti-aliasing occur after the enlargement.

Adobe PDF Printer does take quite some time. It is still grinding away 
on those eight pages and has processed over 200 Million bytes in the 
past 45 minutes. OS X printed the super-sized PDF in less than a 
minute. So, it's size and quality and speed vs 20+ times the processing 
time and 1% the file size. Interesting...

Web designers might find the quality of the JPEGs created by saving to 
html from the Distiller output interesting. The quality seems quite 
excellent and the smallest file size I have seen for the JPEGs. I use 
Photoshop Elements and Graphic Converter and have never achieved the 
quality at such a small file size. Maybe I need some instructions?

If I choose to pursue creating pdf newsletters with lots of photos in 
them, an upgrade to the latest and hottest desktop computer may be in 
my future. The processing by Distiller proceeds nicely in the 
background but it does cause some keystroking delays while typing on my 
Powerbook.

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