Graphics formats for Word and problems printing from PDF

[Barbara Donohue <bdonohue -at- alum -dot- mit -dot- edu>]

Hi, folks,

It may sound primitive, but I work mostly in MSWord.  I'm a 
freelancer, my clients don't have tech writers on staff, and nobody 
knows FrameMaker. Sometimes they have to make quick updates 
themselves and so need to have the docs in Word.

The clients sometimes print the docs (from PDFs) and sometimes 
distribute PDF files on CD.  Sometimes both.

I've been having some problems with line-drawing graphics that come 
from a technical illustrator. She is presumably working in 
Illustrator. What format should she give me for placing the 
illustrations in the Word Doc. WMF? Or?

And photos - what format should they be in?  JPEG?  TIFF?  PNG?  I've 
been using JPEGs and they come out looking bad sometimes, even if 
fairly high resolution.

I'm also having issues with the current printer -- usually a printer 
tells me what settings to use for making a PDF she'll be printing 
from, but the current printer can't tell me, and has been complaining 
about the quality of the doc. Any idea how I could find out what the 
Distiller settings should be?  I've tried "high quality print" preset 
selection & printer is still complaining.

Also, one doc when printed has some very fine vertical, parallel, 
broken lines that show up on the proof off the digital printing 
system on random pages. I'm baffled about this and think it must be 
the digital printing system.

Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks

Barbara Donohue - The engineer who writes.
Turning technology into English.
Specializing in mechanical technologies.



----------
Barbara Donohue
The engineer who writes. Turning technology into English.
978-263-4961
bdonohue -at- alum -dot- mit -dot- edu
Specializing in mechanical technologies  

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