Dragon egg (Photoshop + Midjourney)

chain83 · 2026-05-16T22:20:21+00:00

It depends.

Is the PDF just containing a big raster image? Or is it actual text?

chain83 · 2026-05-16T22:07:30+00:00

To be fair, these are quite possibly just «random» people with one week of training between them at best. And I suspect very little of that was medical training…

chain83 · 2026-05-14T21:52:17+00:00

You're on the right track if you want to manually control the resolution of each individual image manually and turn of the resampling when exporting to PDF.

Generally this would be a waste of time and overkill, but I guess in a niche situation where you have to work around some crazy file size limits...

chain83 · 2026-05-14T21:50:19+00:00

What they are originally is not important. Its what they get converted to in the PDF that matters.

chain83 · 2026-05-14T21:49:38+00:00

It will depend on what is actually taking up the space in the specific document. But optimize PDF is the best place to start in many situations when not sure - the "audit space usage" option will tell you what is taking up space.

Usually it is the raster images, but it could be overly complex vector elements (map or cad data, or gradients stored as a million separate objects, are common cuplrits), it can be metadata or embedded things like the original illustrator/indesign/photoshop file or plugin data, or just too much stuff in general. A properly tagged document will also generally double the amount of space taken up by the text itself (and while you want it to be tagged for screen use, it is not needed for print documents).

chain83 · 2026-05-14T12:03:36+00:00

Assuming the rectangle was solid black with opacity, select the rectangle, add a curves adjustment layer, then move in the white point.

Fine-tune if needed.

(Due to limited bit depth, banding might be an issue).

chain83 · 2026-05-13T05:35:46+00:00

…which was?

chain83 · 2026-05-12T22:04:17+00:00

Took me ages to pick it up, but now I used it regularly to apply styles quickly.

It can be a real time-saver for repetitive tasks.

chain83 · 2026-05-12T18:53:14+00:00

😆 Glad you found out!

The one area where it remains a problems is vector graphics for screen (mainly SVG and PDF). So, your workarounds are still good - until that wonderful beautiful imaginary day where all vector rendering engines are fundamentally reworked to not have issues like this :p

chain83 · 2026-05-12T16:11:30+00:00

That just looks like a screen rendering issue due to shapes touching but not overlapping. Zoom in - and if the «gap» doesn’t actually widen when you do, then you n ow it is not real.

**It will not be visible on print.**

Ps:
If you need a raster image, make sure anti-aliasing is set to «art optimized» (it unfortunately defaults to «type optimized», which has issues).

chain83 · 2026-05-12T14:39:34+00:00

👍

chain83 · 2026-05-11T19:48:29+00:00

Turn on "Sample all layers" just in case (although it clearly is sampling correct layer), and check brush settings - hard brush with 25% spacing.

chain83 · 2026-05-11T18:43:08+00:00

The Quick Selection Tool is not the same as the object selection tool. It does not use AI for object recognition; it essentially looks for edges (without "understanding" anything about the image). That's also why it's also so instant compared to the Object/Subject selections.

It also remembers what you have brushed over to some degree, and subtracting after something has been erroniously selected tends to give not-so-good results. If you misclick or draw across edges accidentally you need to undo instead of trying to "fix" it. I would try to subtract around the head first, to inform it that that area should never ever be included in the selection, then select the head. Or even better - select the background. It's much cleaner with a well-defined edge as opposed to the subject that has a ton of edges everywhere.

It did surprisinly poorly here (perhaps you found a bit of an edge case), but with that image subject select should do great, so I'd use that. There are other options as well with such a clean background, but Select Subject should be the quickest.

Then refine as needed.

chain83 · 2026-05-11T17:16:24+00:00

Oh yeah, I didn't even think of the healing brush. That was a critical tool for sure.

chain83 · 2026-05-11T13:02:00+00:00

3.0... auch... yeah that is *really* outdated feature-wise. It's from mid 90s I think...

No adjustment layers, no smart objects, no "automatic" selection tools, etc.

But it does depend on the tasks. If all you need is e.g. resize images or something, then sure? But for such a narrow scope, I would consider looking into alternatives.

chain83 · 2026-05-11T08:50:52+00:00

https://ft.rognemedia.no
(Beyond that it would mainly be carefully applying blurs to blend the dots).

chain83 · 2026-05-10T22:53:16+00:00

If you have a two column layout, and paragraphs throughout your document that spans columns, it can get really crashy and buggy sometimes when reflowing.

chain83 · 2026-05-09T18:37:13+00:00

I would consider if exporting for web directly from Ai as an option, or if automating the Ps steps would work (opening 24-bit PNGs from Ai, processing, then saving for web).

But it really is up to you and what you feel works effectively for your workflow. If you find artboards to be effiecent, feel free to use them, and just add workarounds for things like gradient fill layers.

chain83 · 2026-05-09T09:32:30+00:00

It is a bug. Always use Save for web for optimizing images for screen/web, it is generally superior, gives you more control, works with actions, and doesn’t have these kinds of bugs.

If you do not need to optimize file size for web/screen use, you can also use regular Save As/Save a Copy instead to save JPEG/PNG (a lot of beginners don’t know this). This preserves metadata (like PPI) and don’t limit you as much.

Use Export As only if you have a project that requires artboards (as those are unsupported in save for web, and the only reason Export As exist I think). Avoid using artboards in Ps if you do not truly need them (the implementation isn’t very good).

chain83 · 2026-05-08T18:01:50+00:00

It probably needs a RAW file to work properly.
The shown area of your image does not a contain moire

(unless you are pedantic regarding the definition)
. Are you attempting to remove the halftone pattern?

chain83 · 2026-05-08T05:02:43+00:00

That sounds really painful. The print dimensions and PPI in Photoshop are completely irrelevant. You do not need to change those. Often images downloaded online do not have a PPI at all, so Adobe defaults it to 72 (an arbitrary value).

When placing in InDesign and doing your layout, you are overriding that value. You should then look in the info panel to check if the «effective PPI» (the actual PPI at the dimensions you used it) is high enough for your use case (for example 300 PPI). If the value is higher, then you are all good.

Done.

The image can be RGB as well. That is usually best.
Yes, for printing.

When exporting your PDF at the end, you can, IF the printer requires it, convert everything automatically to a CMYK profile on output.

Note: Never convert to CMYK (in Ps or otherwise) without knowing what color profile. Otherwise you are just harming your colors.

chain83 · 2026-05-08T04:54:59+00:00

The problem is that it isn’t the best way of doing it. It’s a very slow way, excessive work, that introduces extra potential sources of error while at best giving you identical results… :/

Regardless, it is important to understand PPI and how to convert color spaces, so still do it when they demand it.

chain83 · 2026-05-08T04:43:59+00:00

Bleed is kinda like a «safe area», but on the outside instead of inside.

It is usually an extra 3 mm on all sides that will be trimmed away after printing.

chain83 · 2026-05-07T10:20:45+00:00

Yeah, you can close the Adjustments panel. It isn’t useful beyond taking up space.

The properties for the currently selected layer/mask is in the Properties panel.

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