Thoughts on papercraft model file formats?

[Leif Ohlsson]

Pdf based on Illustrator - most definitely! That will enable rescaling and editing, without loss of quality.

If you create your pdf-files from Illustrator, there are many settings you can explore. Press quality is what I've arrived at.

Leif

[trainfanM]

Thanks for your feedback everyone. I guess pdf wins hands-down.

I think what I'll do is release my models in pdf, but also include color sample charts in png and pdf formats for color calibration. That way at least the png will have the ICC color profile, and the pdf can be matched against it if needed.

Thanks again!

[zubie]

Thanks airdave for that post. I had never given much thought to what pdf was until I was trying to figure out why my powerpoint pdfs were so lousy (yes there is a way to set a higher resolution and decrease the color compression).

Even there though, I really am not that familiar with what pdf can, can't, or won't preserve. Anyway, out of curiosity, I just ran up the GIMP dialog for PDF export:

          [_] Apply layer masks before saving
          [_] Convert bitmaps to vector graphics where possible
          [_] Omit hidden layers and layers with zero opacity

(all blank by default)
I generally export from GIMP's native XCF format straight to pdf. Sometimes I flatten before export. I figure I could hack with the software a bit, but before I do, I wonder if anyone already knows what the first 2 items mean (can it really take a raster image layer and turn it into a vector graphic?). Oh, btw GIMP's export does keep the original dpi.

Regarding what I know about the different compression formats, GIF uses an indexed color map so it will always have trouble with images with lots of subtle shades, like photos; IIRC you can never have more than 256 colors. PNG does a much better job there. JPEG can compress more, but it can come with a noticeable price of color blocks which is an artifact of the compression algorithm at higher compression rates. This isn't always immediately noticeable on the screen, particularly if you are seeing it through a rendering engine that tries to fix it on the fly.

[michael dazzo]

I love and have the newest version called acrobat reader DC it's cool and it's free! and it's here

https://get.adobe.com/reader/ if anybody like to try it out first it work wonders for me very well!

[airdave]

Good info Mike!

Mike, Reader is for viewing PDFs...but not for making them.

To make PDFs, you need Acrobat. (if you want to use an Adobe product)
And Acrobat is not free.

*DC is just the cloud connected version of Reader.

[piginapoke]

The only models I've designed were in Paint (!) And left in that format. Given the ease of handling PDFs now I would convert any future creations into PDFs. Lots of readers around especially for my smartphone.

[Revell-Fan]

I use PDFill for most of my works:

PDFill PDF Editor with FREE PDF Writer and FREE PDF Tools

It is very powerful and converts any raster image without degrading quality. And it is FREE.

[Mike1158]

This may be out of order but there are other programs that save as PDF one of them being Word.

[airdave]

Many many programs can save/publish to PDF,
but they are using another installed program to do it.
I can publish my CorelDraw files to PDF
only because I have another program (Adobe Acrobat) installed

and then its integrated into my Corel menu options.

In most cases, you will have to install a PDF creator on top of whatever project software you are using.

Word (Microsoft) might be publishing in the same manner...
I'm not an expert on Word, so I don't know all its features.
Microsoft does have a history of pilfering other software for their own use.

[Mike1158]

As far as I know, pdf is just a file format which has a copywrite like any format. I would expect that Microsoft pay a fee for this rather like cad programs do for other cad formats such as Autodesk formats, dxf etc.