Which PDF creation software doesn't suffer from these artifacts?

Question

Either I'm doing something wrong, or it's ridiculous that we're in 2012 and we can't print a PowerPoint file to PDF without all sorts of silly artifacts (see the test file below). I'm looking for a "virtual printer" software for Windows that doesn't suffer from:

1. Random horizontal lines through images. The problem is discussed all over the web, yet I don't use any sort of transparency, and still get these lines. Adobe Distiller creates these all the time.
2. Jagged images in the PDF. I have a huge (>3MP) PNG in one of the slides, yet it looks like crap if printed with CutePDF Writer 3.68 or PDFCreator 1.2.3, while other images (JPG in the PPTX) look as good as in the original.

CutePDF doesn't really have settings, but in PDFCreator I've even used "ZIP" for image compression, and still get the jagged oblique line and jagged logo from the test file. DPI was set to 600, and in PowerPoint 2007 on Windows 7 I've checked "High quality".

Test file

Here's a test PowerPoint file. I'm looking for some "virtual printer driver" application for Windows that produces a PDF out of this file without the artifacts above (and preferably without any other ones).

Answer 1

Office 2007 SP2 includes built in support for saving to PDF/XPS files. Before SP2 there was a standalone add-in, the Microsoft Office Addin for saving to PDF and XPS which added this ability. (2016-May Update: replaced the now defunct original link with a Wayback Machine copy).

Now the jawdrop moment - this thing is too good to be true:

• a 1Mb download
• saving is about 10 times faster than printing via Adobe or CutePDF or PDF Creator
• the generated PDF is between 2 and 4 times smaller than the PDFs generated by those
• the PDF also displays instantly in Foxit Reader, on every page. The PDFs produced by the virtual printers took a 1-2 seconds to display image-heavy pages.
• the oblique line is smooth
• the logo is super smooth
• no stupid horizontal lines

Alas, the map image has visible JPEG compression artifacts, and there don't seem to be any configuration settings for this addin. It reads the PDF/A setting from HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\FixedFormat, but the "Optimize for" setting isn't persisted (it reverts to "standard").

Answer 2

I have never in my life gotten PowerPoint to export something remotely acceptable. Which is sad, since I had to convert a bunch of PowerPoint presentation to image series in my time.

Given that the applications you mention are basically printers, a document has to be generated first so it can be print. So some rendering is done by PowerPoint. And PowerPoint just can't get it right.

So I seriously doubt that there is a solution from within PowerPoint (would be glad to learn otherwise)

How did I solve it? Screenshots. Lots of them. If you have to do it a lot, you can get fancy by using AutoHotkey and Greenshot.

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As a side note, the XPS export from PowerPoint 2010 seems to work much better than the PDF export (which isn't that surprising). For example, the "Startup Weekend" logo on slide 2 of your example document is transparent and smooth in the XPS (white, jagged background in PDF).

XPS is natively supported on all Windows Vista and later platforms.

Answer 3

I don't have your stated problems with the provided file:

Acrobat X Pro

(with included MS Office plugin)

File > Save as Adobe PDF

Seems perfect. Unfortunately, not free software.

Example

PrimoPDF

This is a PDF printer driver and, as you might expect, gives you exactly what would come out of the printer.

I used the screen preset (lowest quality).

Unfortunately it has a white border, and quality may not be as good because PowerPoint expanded to fit. That could probably be fixed by playing with the print page size settings, but I have not tried.

Example

Answer 4

just tried your files and do not see those artifacts. I created outputs both from LibreOffice 3.4.4 - OK, there are other problems caused by format compatibility, but not those described (I left default settings) - file is here.

Second one was printed with PDFCreator 1.2.3 from Powerpoint Viewer 2010 (do not have full version of Powerpoint) and looks OK - you can view it here.