Why Convert Adobe Acrobat PDF to JPEG? Isn’t PDF better?

If PDF is such a portable format, why do many of our customers want to be able to convert PDF to JEPG?

Well, one great reason is that it makes your document much easier to view over the web. Your browser automatically views JPEG images, whereas Adobe acrobat has to be installed.

When offering documents to a large public user base, companies do not want to get involved with supporting many different operating systems and applications. JPEG has been supported within browsers for at least 10 years so it is a very safe bet, unlike any other.

Additionally, viewing JPEG images within a browser doesn’t require the start of a plug-in such as Adobe Acrobat embedded within a browser – saving valuable time for users. As all of us have experienced, even on a fast system, starting up Adobe takes a while, whereas viewing a JPEG is effectively instantaneous.

Imagine the time savings that a company, such as a mortgage or insurance company, would realize in its customer service department if files could be viewed more rapidly. (There are other options as well, such as using a commercial web viewer to view all of your documents through a standard web browser, eliminating the need for the creator application – and in the same environment you can retrieve, view and annotate documents and images).

Also, if you have a multipage PDF file such as an account statement or prospectus, even with Adobe installed, the entire file has to be downloaded before the first page can be viewed. For speed and efficiency, it is often better to split up multi-page PDF documents to single page JPEGs and stream them one at a time to the browser. Your users see their pages much more quickly this way.

The downside of JPEG is that the algorithm was meant to compress continuous tone images such as photos, not documents. Sometimes JPEG stored documents may exhibit artifacts or fuzziness around the text. Depending upon the document, other compression methods may do better than JPEG. As always, consult your imaging experts (Snowbound) for the optimum image conversion or document viewing solution to your requirements.

For additional information about the JPEG image format you can visit http://www.jpeg.org/.

Comments

[Sam L.]

You don't actually need to purchase Adobe Acrobat to view PDF files.

Just download the free Adobe Reader program from http://www.adobe.com/reader

Sam L.
Customer Service
Solid Documents, LLC
saml@soliddocuments.com
http://www.soliddocuments.com