Hi,

Currently my PlanetPress form embeds with image, I found that it affects my print speed.

So, I saved the background image into printer, the print speed seems to be faster. But I want more, I understand that the background image size may affect the ripping speed but how about the image format. Will I use jpeg format, eps or bmp as background image instead of pdf? Any suggestion?

Currently I am using pdf (searchable) as image.

Please help.

Thank you

Wing,

The image format that you'll use depends on whether you want to prioritize speed or quality.

Some image formats like tiff or bmp are very high quality, but also very big in terms of file size. Jpegs have smaller file size and offers better performances, but their quality is lower than tiff and if you may have a loss of quality if you use jpeg.

Pdf and eps files are vectorial images, and works differently than raster images(bmp, jpeg, tiff, etc...). They contain code inside of them, and use code to build and display their image. So it doesn't work like a raster image format, and just because the image looks big doesn't necessarely mean the file itself will be big. However, if the pdf file contains a raster image embedded in it, then it's a bit like using a raster image. Also, because the pdf can contain it's own code and it's own method of embedding images, the size and performance of a pdf file can vary a lot depending on the version of the pdf technology, and also the software that was used to build the pdf.

In short, we could say:

TIFF:
Pros: Reliable and high quality.
Cons: Large file size and slow performance with high res images, PlanetPress will only display the first page of multipage tiffs.

JPEG:
Pros: Reliable and smaller file size and better performance than TIFF.
Cons: Lower quality.

PDF:
Pros: Good format if we need to scale the image because it's vectorial and the proportions are always kept. Also, PlanetPress supports pdf files with multiple pages in one file.
Cons: Variable performance and reliability, depending on the version of pdf, the content of the pdf and the software used to generate it. Some pdf files may be potentially incompatible with our software because of this.

Note that pdf files are converted to eps files by PlanetPress when the job is run, which can cause a difference between the original pdf's quality and the quality settings used by PlanetPress. (these can be controlled in the Document's Resource options in PlanetPress Design. If all resolutions are set to 2400, there shouldn't be any downsampling.)

EPS:
Pros: Similar to pdf files, but more reliable because PlanetPress doesn't do any conversion on them.
Cons: Unlike pdf files, EPS files are always single page.

In the end, it's difficult to recommend a specific file format, because they all have pros and cons. It depends on your needs, what kind of job you want to setup, and whether you care more about speed or quality.

Regards,
Raphaël Lalonde Lefebvre

basically it is only lines and boxes, any suggestion?

Thank you

Wing,

For lines and boxes only, in theory, PDF would be good. However, it depends on how your image was generated. If it was originally a raster image, and you just save it to a pdf, maybe it won't save it vectorial-based, and will only take your raster graphic and embed it in the pdf.

However, is the image going to change often from pages to pages or it's static? Because if it's static, and it's only boxes and lines, it may be something you might be able to reproduce using the PlanetPress boxes and lines objects. This way, you wouldn't have to use any images, which would obviously be optimal for performances.

Regards,
Raphaël Lalonde Lefebvre