High-Quality PDFs from OpenOffice

For the past two weeks I've been going out of my mind trying to figure out how to make very high-quality PDFs in OpenOffice without having to use Adobe Distiller. Finally I've figured out how, and I'd like to share that information in case anyone else needs to know. Specifically I've been trying to make PDFs of a scientific article (in the page size A4) and a research conference poster (in A0).

Most important: You can't just "Export to PDF" with OpenOffice itself. That works fine for text, but for print-quality publishing, or for anything with imported, high-resolution images (especially in EPS format, the kind produced by many science programs for figures and diagrams), exporting directly from OpenOffice will lead to PDFs with badly flawed images, regardless of how they appear in your original files. The solution is to "print" to a PostScript file (ending in .prn) on your hard drive (not to paper), and then convert that PRN file to PDF using Ghostgum.

You'll need a PostScript printer driver on your computer; there are good, simple directions at the University of Sussex for how to find and install the free generic one from Adobe (which is here). Ghostgum is also free to download and use. Ghostgum wasn't entirely stable on my XP machine--the program crashed sometimes, seemingly for no reason--but it got the job done reliably enough to use again and again. Sometimes the size of the resulting PDF will appear to be 0kb in Windows Explorer; rest assured that it worked. Just "Refresh" to see the real file size.

Be sure to keep your image files as EPSs (rather than trying to change them to bitmaps, jpegs, etc.). Gary Steele from MIT offers a brief, clear tutorial about this topic here. The one jpeg I tried exporting looked okay in the PDF, but not great; getting jpegs to look perfect seems a bit complicated. However, EPSs look better in the PDF than in the original.

That applies to the rest of your document, too. It's interesting that the resulting PDF of your OpenOffice Impress presentation looks far better as a PDF than it did in OpenOffice itself, no matter how or where you're looking at the PDF. Lines are smoother and clearer, text is cleaner--everything looks more professional. Pictures you make in OpenOffice Draw (sxd files) come out terrific. Jagged, pixellated lines become so rounded and even that you'll wonder why you ever used OpenOffice itself for live slideshows.

Once you get used to making PDFs this way, you'll never present direct from OpenOffice (or Powerpoint) again, and you'll be able to share your work, either online or in print, much more easily and confidently. Everybody wins.

The main drawback to this process: Serious lack of useful documentation. It took me several days to figure all this out. Please write in with comments, questions or suggestions.