Placing screenshots into A4 magazines and improving image quality

[Lyndhurst]

Hi,

I am trying to include tournament crosstables taken from a website for including into a magazine as a jpg file. The first attempt worked fine but required hi-res PDF export as the low-res PDF export led to the tables becomming quite blurred. I then thought it may be better to take the screenshot and output it as a hi-res PDF in its own right before importing the PDF into the magazine file and letting PDF Passthough do its magic when I export the magazine as a low-res PDF. That seemed to (almost) work alnd was an improvement. 

However, I wondered if anyone had come across this before and had a better solution to the problem? I have Publisher and Photo should either have a tool that would be useful to get the tournament tables nice and crisp. 

The magazine will mostly be read online hence I am hoping to export in lower res 72 dpi but need to sort the tournament tables so that they are not blurred. 300 dpi leads to a much larger PDF file for the magazine.

I would appreciate your thoughts, thank you.

passthrough.pdf forum_hires.pdf forum_lowres.pdf

[firstdefence]

To help the helpers I assume these are the tables: https://www.iccf.com/tables

[John Rostron]

If these tables are to be read online, then why not provide a link to the original website?

Are the originals copyright? You ought to check on this.

If they are not copyright, then why not download the original table and utilise that.

John

[Komatös]

It would also be possible to mark the tables and print them as a PDF.

You can then also import it to e. g. Affinity Photo and recreate it as your needs.

Cross Table.pdf

[Lyndhurst]

33 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

To help the helpers I assume these are the tables: https://www.iccf.com/tables

Yes, that is correct. 

Thank you

[Lyndhurst]

47 minutes ago, John Rostron said:

If these tables are to be read online, then why not provide a link to the original website?

Are the originals copyright? You ought to check on this.

If they are not copyright, then why not download the original table and utilise that.

John

Links to the tables are given also but not all readers have online access. No copyright issues. Downloading the original tables is fine but the quality is very poor in a low-res pdf export. 
Thanks John

[Lyndhurst]

16 minutes ago, Komatös said:

It would also be possible to mark the tables and print them as a PDF.

You can then also import it to e. g. Affinity Photo and recreate it as your needs.

Cross Table.pdfUnavailable

Hi Komatös,
Please could you list the steps you too took for the image? 

Thanks

[Komatös]

1. mark the table
2. Call up the print dialogue and select a PDF printer (if available).
3. Load the PDF to e.g. APhoto and edit it according to your needs.

I have revised my first post, now you should see a sample table and the PDF.

[Komatös]

I forgot. In the print dialog choose selection only instead of full page.

[Lyndhurst]

8 minutes ago, Komatös said:

I forgot. In the print dialog choose selection only instead of full page.

Hi,
Thank you for that, I will try those steps next. Would you recommend using the image as a png or pdf in the document? 
 

[Lyndhurst]

41 minutes ago, Komatös said:

It would also be possible to mark the tables and print them as a PDF.

You can then also import it to e. g. Affinity Photo and recreate it as your needs.

Cross Table.pdf 127.3 kB · 0 downloads

That is a nice output, very clear. Did you take any steps with Affinity Photo,I am not experienced with Photo apps, it is something that I plan to develop. 
Thanks You.

[Komatös]

You have to edit the PDF because it is always created as a full page. And as in my example file, a large area is empty.

You must crop it.
 

[Lyndhurst]

19 minutes ago, Komatös said:

You have to edit the PDF because it is always created as a full page. And as in my example file, a large area is empty.
 

Thank you. I was last night taking the screenshot and placing it into a Publisher new documents then exporting it as a hi-res pdf, the next step was to import the hi-res pdf into the magazine page and then export the magazine in low-res but allow pdf passthrough to retain the quality of the 300 dpi PDF, that seemed to work very well but I will try your method this morning as that looks very clear. 
Thank you.

[Komatös]

You are welcome.

With my PDF printer, the files are always output with 300 dpi. I use the one in Windows 10 for this purpose.

[h_d]

If I print the web page to PDF I get a printer-friendly version, without the original sidebar. I can then Place it in Publisher and trim it with the Vector Crop tool without needing to open in Photo:

 

[Fixx]

As said, do not use screenshots but save/print webpages as PDF and use them.

[Lyndhurst]

29 minutes ago, h_d said:

If I print the web page to PDF I get a printer-friendly version, without the original sidebar. I can then Place it in Publisher and trim it with the Vector Crop tool without needing to open in Photo:

 

That solution works great!
Thank you

[Lyndhurst]

3 minutes ago, Fixx said:

As said, do not use screenshots but save/print webpages as PDF and use them.

Thanks Fixx, My taking a screenshot first was the problem. Great help from the forum!