Society of Saint Gregory

Having a frustrating time with Sibelius v Adobe pdf maker. I can make perfect pdfs from Word, Quark, In-design etc at the push of a button but, for some reason, a pdf made from Siblius imposes a 2cm margin all round the page. If I tell it reproduce at 100pc it misses bits out, if I say fit to page it's all much smaller than I'd like. Anyone else had the same problem and, if so, can you help me find the margin settings on the Adobe distiller? I've just spent four hours getting nowhere – when I should have been scrubbing the kitchen floor!

Which version of Sibelius are you using? I can check out versions 3 and 4 on Windows or Mac.

I've just printed an A4 score from Sibelius 4 using the Adobe PDF printer driver on my Mac, and all is OK.

A suggestion if you're strapped for time or have a deadline, e-mail me your score(s) and I'll convert it/them to PDF for you then e-mail you them back. That doesn't resolve pdf creation problem3 for you though.

I'm using Sib 3 and Adobe Acrobat Distiller 7. on a PC. I think the pdf files created by that combination are OK. I'll have a mouse around my Adobe Acrobat printer driver settings and see if there's anything interesting we can tamper with.

This is an old problem that has been inherent in the Humans (Ver: Sapiens) software produced by God since time immemorial. Go to File>Duties>Housekeeping and uncheck the box marked "Procrastinate". Then leave Human to run unattended for about twenty minutes while it sorts itself out. Then try it again. This usually does the trick.
p.s. Don't expect God to sort this problem out any time soon. I checked with the helpline and they said its a random internal fault that affects all versions of Human at some time or other, and most computers work round it.

Thank you all for the advice but I finally cracked it. I was leaving the page set up on Letter instead of A4 – as simple as that – everything was being proportionately reduced! Very happy now!
Thanks again, one and all – especially Sid – surreal!
M

Ahah! Glad you cracked it - and a useful one to remember for our own work.

You can use FreepdfXP
(http://freepdfxp.de/fpxp.htm)to get PDF output from anything with a printer interface - it gets added as another printing device, handy if you're using a simpler notation tool such as Noteworthy.

D.

Or Cuteddf ( http://www.cutepdf.com/ ) in English - same sort of thing, appears as a new printer

I've had a problem generating PDFs from Sibelius on my Mac, since upgrading to Sibelius 4 (or it may be since upgrading to OS X 10.4; but I think it was the Sibelius upgrade that did it). Since then the PDFs look very ugly on screen - all the musical notation looks crudely drawn and barely legible, except at the highest magnification when it looks fine. Ordinary text is fine, nicely antialiased and as legible as it should be, even at low levels of zoom; it's just the music that looks funny. Printed out, everything is fine.

Anybody else recognise the symptoms?

M.

From the Sibelius web site forum - dunnow if it helps:

Sib. 4.0: pdf files of Sibelius scores look jagged when using Preview
Posted by Roy Wheldon - 04 Apr 06

Since updating to Sibelius 4.0 (as well as 4.1), pdf files as exhibited by the Preview application (on Mac OS X 10.4.5) look lousy, although they print out OK. This is a drawback, for when sending pdf versions of Sibelius files to clients to proofread, they must print out the pdf files to read them (assuming they have a Mac). This is a waste of paper and a waste of energy.
I don't know if Windows users have the same problem. Or even if the pdf files would look better using Acrobat Reader in place of Preview on a Mac.

Re: Sib. 4.0: pdf files of Sibelius scores look jagged when using Preview
Posted by Daniel at Sibelius - 06 Apr 06

Roy, the problem is with the version of Preview in Mac OS X 10.4. PDF files produced from Sibelius via the direct 'Save As PDF' route in the File > Print dialog look fine in Adobe Reader 7, on both Mac and Windows.

Sib. 4.1: Sib 4.1 vs. Sib 3.x on Mac RE: Preview and screen view of pdfs
Posted by Brian Moore - 01 Apr 06

I have an issue where the preview of music on Mac (Tiger - 10.4.5) (and therefore screen portion of pdf) does not render clearly on Sib 4.1 where all is well on Sib 3...

Easy to reproduce - simply create a new score and immediately go to Print and select preview...

I should note that pdfs on version 4.1 DO print as expected...

Thanks for any confirmation/resolution of this issue!

Re: Sib. 4.1: Sib 4.1 vs. Sib 3.x on Mac RE: Preview and screen view of pdfs
Posted by dbudde - 01 Apr
When you print, save PDF as postscript first then open that file using the finder. It will convert to PDF when opened and will be a clear image.


Re: Sib. 4.1: Sib 4.1 vs. Sib 3.x on Mac RE: Preview and screen view of pdfs
Posted by schwabbl - 01 Apr 02:17

Wow. Big difference.
Why is that?

Brian

Re: Sib. 4.1: Sib 4.1 vs. Sib 3.x on Mac RE: Preview and screen view of pdfs
Posted by dbudde - 01 Apr 06
This is a well known issue. Unfortunately the cause is not determined. See also this thread.

http://www.sibelius.com/cgi-bin/helpcen ... &groupid=3
--
iMac G5|MacBook Pro|OS X 10.4.5|Sibelius 4.1|Logic 7.1|DP 4.61|Kontakt 2|Kurzweil PC2x
http://web.mac.com/dbudde/

Thanks, Gwyn! The solutions both work a treat, viz. viewing the PDFs in Adobe Reader, or saving the PDFs as postscript and then converting with Preview.

I had looked at the Sibelius forum - did a search for 'pdfs' and 'ugly' and didn't find anything. Should have searched more patiently. Or asked you sooner. Thanks again.

M.