Optimization of low-resolution images embedded in PDF files

Topaz Photo AI Ideas
1

Developing a solution that would use your AI to automatically enhance all low-resolution images to 300 dpi in PDF files would be a dream solution for me as a printer.

In the graphic arts, we receive a lot of files with poor quality images every day.
When we provide our expertise, we have to regularly warn our customers of this, otherwise their images will be printed in poor quality.
This wastes our time…

I’ve been using tools like Enfocus PitStop and Callas PDF Toolbox for years.
These plug-ins, combined with Adobe Acrobat, can detect low-definition images and apply corrective measures using extrapolation and sharpness… But the results are not as convincing.

I’m currently using your Photoshop plugin to optimize some of the images embedded in the PDFs we receive.
But it requires some manipulation.
1 -I have to edit them from Adobe Acrobat in Photoshop.
2 - Convert them to RGB so that they can be opened by your plugin in Topaz Photo IA.
3 - After increasing their resolution, I convert them back to CMYK.
4 - Then I save the image in Photoshop to integrate it back into the original PDF.
What a lot of manipulations!
I can do it occasionally, but not on PDFs with many poor-quality images… it’s too tedious and not very profitable.

If I could combine your algorithms with AI, it would be a godsend for saving precious time in commercial printing.

Thank you.

2

I can totally see how that would save so much time for your workflow. There’s no easy solution from our end unfortunately.

You could cut your workflow a bit by converting the PDFs to JPG and feeding it directly into Photo AI and then export as a PDF again in PS but that’s still quite tedious.

PDF support is different from photo file formats so I don’t think we can prioritize it at the moment without sacrificing the work we’re doing with RAW files from cameras.

4

Hello Tim,

Thank you for your feedback.

Your proposed process for PDFs is unfortunately not feasible, as it would degrade PDF files into images.

We need to preserve all the elements (text, vector illustrations, images).

On the other hand, the PDFs we receive contain both high-resolution and low-resolution images.

I can’t degrade the whole for a few low-resolution images.

For me, your method is too empirical, and still too cumbersome to implement.

There’s no Topaz app that I can integrate into my Enfocus Switch feeds, for example.

But if your development team could look into this possibility or approach Enfocus and Callas about it, I think this solution could be of interest to many printers.

Thank you for your interest.

1 Like
5

Thanks for clarifying, I wasn’t aware of the limitations of going from PDF like that.