converting tiffs to pdf

I've not tried this, but perhaps you could make a slideshow of the images and then "print" them to a pdf?

I've done that typ of thing by convert them to PDF and then using a program like the full version of acrobat to sting all the PDFs together. Then you'd have one file with each image on it's own page.

Wayne

If your using OS X you could drop all of them in a word document and then print it to a PDF.

Tom,

If you're using an OS X machine, try the following:

(1) Open Printer Setup Utility (in Panther) and make one of your printers a Desktop Printer. Alternatively, go into ~/Library/Printers/ and make an alias of one of your printers and put that alias on the desktop (which is all a "Desktop Printer" is in OS X anyway).

(2) Drag all your tiff files onto that desktop printer alias icon. Print each file as a PDF. NOTE: if it were me, I would drag 10, maybe 20, files at a time -- 126 is a lot of files to drag onto a desktop printer at once!

(3) Combine all the PDFs with "Combine PDFs," a freeware PDF combiner:

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/12354

Good luck!

Matt

A simple free way to do this in OSX (without having to download freeware):

Open mail.app and create/compose a new e-mail. Drag your tiffs into the mail message. Then print your message but choose 'save as pdf."

You can even write an applescript to do this for you in the future.

Enjoy.

Great tip! I never would've thought of that.

Matt

Using OS X to make the PDFs will work, but you don't get any control over the quality and file size tradeoffs. If you go the standard Adobe route and buy the full version of Acrobat, you have all the Distiller job options for downsampling, screens (lines per inch), and so on.

If you have to meet some requirements in file size or high quality images, you may need to get Acrobat and install its PostScript printer driver. Then you need an app (such as GraphicConverter) to print the TIFF images to the Adobe PostScript printer. Then you can take the resulting PostScript file(s) and distill with Acrobat.

Quality issues pop up regularly when people start to make their first PDFs of a document and they look at the image quality and are disappointed. For some reason Adobe's default values favor smaller file size at the expense of quality. I don't know what file size/quality tradeoff defaults Apple made in their PDF previews.

--- TWriter

The ever useful Graphic Convetor has a "Print Folder" option that you can use in OS X to create a PDF or in Classic OS to generate a PS file. I used this technique with OS X the other day and found that the quality was acceptable (original files were scanned for 150 dpi output, saved as JPEG) but the PDF was barely smaller than the sum of the original file sizes.

Project description: I fancied scanning the Mac Thunderscan manual for the benefit of those who don't have a copy. If you own a Thunderscan, the manual will help you get decent results; if you don't own a Thunderscan, the manual is a fine read and a great example of how to write readable technical documentation. The manual comprises about 96 pages and every page has at least one illustration. 150 dpi output does not do the original justice and I'll probably scan it for 300 dpi so that the illustrations look reasonable when printed. However, I'm very concerned about file size: my back of an envelope± calculation suggests that a document of this size would be about 80MB if generated using Mac OS X's PDF capability. Is 80MB just too ludicrous for a user manual?

±My back of an envelope reference refers to both the method (mental arithmetic) and record of the calculation.

Phil