# pdf experts, some help please **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 25, 2008, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pdf-experts-some-help-please/439093 "2008-02-25T17:15:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Busy\_Scissors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@Busy\_Scissors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Busy_Scissors)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2008, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pdf-experts-some-help-please/439093/1 "2008-02-25T17:15:01Z")
I am making a pdf of a word file that contains a picture inserted in as a tiff file. The entire document converts fine, apart from this picture - I just get a border with a cross in it on my pdf. What’s going wrong here? I get the same result with adobe as with a free pdf maker (cutepdf). It’s just this picture as well, if i isolate the page form the larger document then i get the same problem. The tiff file, which is 2mb in size, comes from a drawing package that is quite rudimentary. It’s the only way of saving the picture such that it looks good. Alternative file formats like gif or jpeg work fine with the pdf, but they look awful in both word and the pdf. Any ideas on what’s causing the problem? ---
**Author:** ![Gaudere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e495f1/32.png) [@Gaudere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaudere)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2008, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pdf-experts-some-help-please/439093/2 "2008-02-25T17:22:14Z")
It sounds as if the picture is not properly embedded. Did you have the picture saved to your hards drive, and place it in the document with insert\>picture\> from file? If not, try inserting the pic that way and see if it works. ---
**Author:** ![Gaudere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e495f1/32.png) [@Gaudere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaudere)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2008, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pdf-experts-some-help-please/439093/3 "2008-02-25T17:23:20Z")
P.S., the jpg will probably look fine if you save it in a higher resolution, or just make it really huge and shrink it in word. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2008, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pdf-experts-some-help-please/439093/4 "2008-02-25T17:25:03Z")
How are you determining that the TIFF file “looks good”? Can you use that same viewer to convert it to another format, or copy it into the clipboard and paste it into Word? By the way, if you do the copy-and-paste, try “Paste Special” in Word and try different ways of pasting it. I suspect “device independent bitmap” is the most reliable. ---
**Author:** ![Busy\_Scissors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@Busy\_Scissors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Busy_Scissors)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2008, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pdf-experts-some-help-please/439093/5 "2008-02-25T17:43:29Z")
Thanks for the quick responses. The tiff file is embedded as you indicate **Gaudere** , I don’t think that is the problem. I can’t export the file from the drawing package as a jpeg direct, I think I got the jpeg from saving the file as an eps and opening it with distiller, _then_ saving as a jpeg. Maybe there is scope for playing around with the resolution here. Saying all that, I just solved my problem. I can insert the drawing file in its native format (chemdraw) and it looks great! I knew I could do this, but must have had a brain freeze due to an impending deadline :smack: Still no idea why the tiff wouldn’t make a pdf, but that’s problem solved. Cheers! 🙂