PDF resolution issues with Revu BlueBeam

Gustavo Neri

Tagged: Adobe Acrobat Revu BlueBeam PDF Visual Issues

This topic has 6 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 11 months ago by Heather Castles.

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- January 5, 2018 at 10:58 am #100791
  
  Gustavo Neri
  Member
  
  Hi all!
  
  I’ve searched and searched for this issue, but haven’t found anyone else mentioning this issue. I work for an architectural firm as a graphic designer, and recently everyone started using Revu Bluebeam to view pdfs instead of Adobe Acrobat. This has been my nightmare, because now every presentation I export from Indesign looks god-awful in Revu Bluebeam. Everything looks perfect across every other viewing platform besides Bluebeam – but this software is unfortunately here to stay in my industry.
  
  Here are some of the visual issues I’ve encounted:
  
  -drop shadows turning into large solid black shapes
  -vector linework, especially curved lines, appear ragged
  -objects with a color fill show a visible edge with no color fill
  -layered images show a glaring outline of the image behind it.
  
  Here are some of the solutions I’ve attempted – but mind you – I need to keep my file sizes small (email size)
  -exporting for print with different compressions
  -exporting for interactive with different reslutions
  -exporting as eps and distilling
  -exporting with different adobe compatibility versions
  
  So far the only solution I’ve had is to export pages as jpg images, and then pasting them back into indesign and re-exporting. This is an insane and costly solution in terms of time, file size, and resolution.
  
  Please see this image for a examples of the issues I’m experiencing (sorry no html options to make link):
  https://imgur.com/a/sELiv
  
  THANK YOU FOR ANY AND ALL HELP!
- January 5, 2018 at 11:33 am #100792
  
  David Blatner
  Keymaster
  
  I had not heard of Bluebeam Revu before. Interesting! I did not realize it was so popular in the AEC space.
  
  I wonder if this is something you can change in the Rendering preferences in their software?
  
  Also, have you looked at exporting PDF/X-1a vs. PDF/X-4?
  
  https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/519854-blue-beam-vs-adobe-acrobat
- January 5, 2018 at 1:37 pm #100795
  
  Kelly Vaughn
  Participant
  
  Hi Gustavo,
  
  Bluebeam Revu has a lot of great features for AEC that Acrobat doesn’t do as elegantly.
  
  But every PDF viewer will have different capabilities. Apple preview for example, can’t handle transparency or interactive features. The first thing that comes to mind is the drop shadow. It looks like Revu can’t handle transparency. Try exporting your PDFs with Acrobat 4.0 compatibility. That will flatten the transparency.
  
  As far as the jagged edges, it looks like Revu is handling the curved vector lines like a typical CAD program. It doesn’t render them as curved lines, but as a series of straight lines. I found this: https://communities.bluebeam.com/showthread.php?4920-Print-to-PDF-ugly-hatches-fills
  
  – Open Revu
  – Press “Ctrl+K” on your keyboard to open the Preferences
  – Choose “Rendering” on the left
  – Uncheck the box that says “Fill Anti-Aliasing”
  – Click “OK”
  
  Give that a whirl and see if it helps.
  
  If all else fails and everyone at your firm is switching to Bluebeam and will no longer have licenses for Acrobat, you may want to ask them to view your PDFs using the free Adobe Reader. That will allow them to be viewed properly.
  
  If anyone at your firm decides to switch back to Acrobat, I have a Lynda course specifically for using Acrobat in the AEC industry. Perhaps it will be of use: https://www.lynda.com/Acrobat-tutorials/Adobe-Acrobat-DC-PDF-Commenting-AEC/597013-2.html
  - March 19, 2019 at 9:55 am #115386
    
    Gustavo Neri
    Member
    
    Hi Kelly,
    
    I must have missed this response from you back in January 2018 – this is some great advice. Definitely helped with the jagged edges.
    
    Thank you!
- March 19, 2019 at 9:34 am #115374
  
  Travis Smith
  Member
  
  Gustavo, you’ve likely found a solution by now. I was having the same issue yesterday and a Google search turned up your post. I spent much of the day yesterday trying to work on this and just came up with what appears to be a solution. Instead of exporting to PDF, try “printing” to PDF. I did try exporting using Acrobat 4 (PDF1.3) which did help a little, but the resulting text did not seem to be as smooth as I needed. Printing to PDF seems to be giving me the results I’m looking for.
  - March 19, 2019 at 9:52 am #115385
    
    Gustavo Neri
    Member
    
    Thanks Travis,
    
    I did end up trying export to print rather than interactive, as well as trying the solutions above. It helped with some issues and not with others. Transparencies and vector curves still had issues, and any png images would appear with a white stroke around them.
    
    I finally came to the solution of just exporting my pages as jpegs and then placing the jpegs into a new indesign doc, then exporting that as a pdf. I left all my text as vector to keep those items clean and editable from the pdf.
    
    Huge roundabout solution, but it was the only way to keep appearances uniform across all platforms.
- May 18, 2020 at 4:51 pm #1251035
  
  Heather Castles
  Member
  
  I’m having the exact same issue. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes PDFs created from ID open just fine in BlueBeam, other times images or missing (some but not all), other times the text moves. It’s making life a nightmare. Any updates or solutions?
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