PDF converters- what works?

[daMoose_Neo]

I'm having issues up the wazoo with the PDF converter PDF995 and trying to properly align my card images on business card sheets. The original Word document is perfect, dead on, tried it on a couple different printers now, and accept for one with some feed issues they all came out fine.
The resultant PDF off of the converter? Its messing with the sizes of the cards, and no matter what setting, margin setting or printer setting I try, its not lining up correctly.

I don't have or have access to Adobe Acrobat, hence the use of a converter. Are there any other converters out there that work, without mis-aligning/resizing my images?

[LordSmerf]

You might try Open Office which will open Word Documents and can save directly to a PDF.  I don't know about precise alignment work, but it may work.

Thomas

[Eero Tuovinen]

Or, if it's evident that only <dadah>Acrobat Distiller</dadah> can do the job, why not just drop the finished document to somebody else to convert? Much simpler, and all told takes half an hour of processing time, assuming that you have some massive files.

At some point it becomes more sensible to stop the tinkering and take the most straightforward route. If you need to do one conversion per year, there's no reason to tune a system for it. Better to outsource the job. Only try to find the perfect free system if
a) you make PDF documents all the time
and
b) you aren't making money from those documents.
If a) holds but b) doesn't, buy Acrobat. If b) holds but a) doesn't, outsource. It's as simple as that, isn't it?

Heck, PM me and I'll try if the cards come out OK with Distiller...

[Nathan P.]

Along those same lines, my version of Word (Microsoft Word X for Mac) has a "save to PDF" option built in that should preserve all the settings. PM me about and I can see if it works out.

[xenopulse]

Alternatively, Adobe has a web interface for creating individual PDFs for those who only rarely need to do that. I think you can get a one-month login for $10. I think it's at http://createpdf.adobe.com.

[Clay]

I'll second the Open Office recommendation.  I've stopped using Word entirely in favor of OpenOffice. I get much better results, and I really like the entire suite better than Office.

[daMoose_Neo]

Thanks for the offers ^_^

My Word PDFs are fine and I do make some text conversions fairly regularly. This is just a high demand job (making sure the cards line up right with the sheets to prevent horrid misprints and reprints). Besides I'd rather like to find a way myself to do this, as we're talkin huge files and a 56k connection. The final PDFs are around 10MB, as they're "printing" its around 110MB with all of the images. Might be overkill going 300 DPI for the cards, but thats what they look best as, too much smaller and you get that funky, pixeled look.
Downloading OpenOffice now, going to try that. Maybe I'll post a Word file with one page, see how that turns out for folks that do have Distiller or Acrobat, see how that goes?

[Trevis Martin]

You might also try scribus which is an open source layout application, similar to Quark and Indesign that generates pdf.

best

Trevis

[daMoose_Neo]

Hmmkay - I've uploaded a word document:
http://www.neoproductions.net/files/twilight_sample.doc

Should be formatted exactly as needed to appear on the standard Avery business card. If anyone here who volenteered can check out the alignment for a PDF version I'd be thrilled.
Thanks ^_^

[Eero Tuovinen]

OK, I downloaded the file (nice looking cards, by the way) and fed it through the Acrobat-Word automatic conversion. I didn't fiddle with the setup in any way, let's see if there's anything wrong with this version, first.

The margins in the resulting PDF are as follows:
Top:18,8 mm
Left: 13,8 mm
Right: 11,4 mm
Down: 25,4 mm
while the margins in the Word file seem to be
Top: 20 mm
Left: 14 mm
Right: 11,5 mm
Down: 24,4 mm
(Are these correct for your business cards?)

I measured the PDF margins by the use of the cropping tool, so there could be a couple of micrometers of throw-off (and clearly is). However, as can be seen, the difference is a little more than that, and in the wrong direction. So something is clearly afoot. The PDF situates cards quite exactly a millimeter too high compared to the Word document. Is this the same result you get?

...

OK, now I've tried fiddling with the PDF creation tools somewhat. The problem's not in page size definition, and is not affected by method of feeding (PDFmaker versus printing-to-PDF). I also looked into converting the file into something that Quark or some other program could eat, but no luck; Word files are a chapter of their own in the great book of nature.

...

Nope, can't do it. There's some factor throwing it off, something I've not met before. We could research the problem and handle it that way, but instead...

...

OK, a trick allows to go around the problem. I increased the size of the page somewhat, moved the cards into the middle of the page, changed the page into a PDF file and cropped the excess. Now it should be OK:
http://www.arkkikivi.net/muut/twilight_sample.pdf
I didn't concern myself with picture quality at this time, so it's pretty bad. That should however be easy to fix if the positioning is good. So try it out! (If you wasn't already wise to it, I have nothing approaching letter-size card sheets here in Europe...) If it's almost there but not quite (like, three micrometers off), that's probably because I've been using the programs in meter-based mode instead of inches, which causes slight inaccuracy here. If it's off more than that, that's probably because I have the wrong margins (so check if my above numbers for the original document are correct!). The principle of the thing should be solid, though.

In any case, I think you should seriously consider some other layout program, Word's just not very good for it. Apart from these PDF-problems there's
a) the general compatibility issues (Word doesn't make PS or other picture files)
b) quality problems (text should really be in vector form at this point IMO)
c) work efficiency. A vector layout program like Freehand would be especially suitable for this kind of work, I would think. If you have many cards and a complex work flow, the work adds up if you have to fiddle much with positioning and such.
Would you like to talk about your work flow in general? What programs do you use and in what steps to create the cards?

[Eero Tuovinen]

Actually, I noticed that you had had problems with card size, too, so checked that in my cards. The width and heigth were off 6 and 2 micrometers respectively! What manner of wileness is this...

Nope, stays a mystery as far as I'm concerned. My guess is that the positioning/resizing elements of Word cause false approximations in-program that cannot be carried out in the actual file conversion, and that causes the discrepancies. (Technobabble is the answer! Trust in technobabble!) Meaning that the problem really cannot be dealt with in Word.

How many cards do you have, and what kind of plans do you have about the sheets? It shouldn't be a problem to find somebody who has a layout program to make and convert the sheets. If it's just a couple of hundred TIFF (or whatever) pictures you have to have in specific places on letter-size sheets (like it would seem from the Word example), then it's a half-an-hour work with a layout program to put them in and convert. Why not do that instead of scrambling with Word?

Sorry I couldn't be of help. I hope you manage some solution.

[daMoose_Neo]

Thanks ^_^ I was really impressed with the artwork, the artists really captured the characters and REALLY followed the direction (which was never more than a one line).

Formatting and Layout:
This is actually done in a program I wrote in VB using DirectX ^_^ I keep MS Access databases for my card game designs, its wonderfully easy for me to whip off test decks via the report functions. The program of mine is really easy to work with, two clicks renders the image and then saves it if it meets approval. If not, play around with it in a text box and re-render.
The VB program generates the cards at 300 DPI as bitmap images, hence the lack of the vector use.
The actual size of the cards is supposed to be 2 wide x 3.25 tall. I really know I should be giving more allowance width wise, but I'm already cropping down from 2.25 wide, and its a chunk. Maybe thats what I have to do~

I'm working with about 75 individual cards, between the set, expansion, and some promos/freebies, that'll all be converted. Each deck has 54 cards per, so I've also got quite a few to work with.
Mayhaps have to do some more readjusting of the layout...Thanks for checking it out though!