by high quality they probly meant that your jpegs will be compressed minimally, therefore preserving the quality of the image. I actually recommend using TIFFs instead of jpegs.

Yes but

Yes we use print quality tiffs in the layout of the magazine... the question is why would the printer recommend we compress to jpg during distilling to pdf...and even at the highest quality jpg compression file size will drop more than half...

The printer isn't asking you to use JPGs in your original layout. He's asking you to use JPG compression when making the PDF. Totally different. In Distiller's settings, under compression, you will see that the default compression type for colour and greyscale images is JPG compression (at least in my version of Distiller at home - V5). This is one of the ways that a PDF file can be compressed so much - and be so much smaller than the layout file size + all the images. The compression used on the images in the creation of the PDF is not so high that quality is lost - just ask the many peope who routinely send PDFs for commercial printing and used default settings to make it - most don't even realise that JPG compression is used on the images.

Try making a PDF and changing the default compression to TIF - and thren print the PDF. You probably won't notice any difference no matter which type of compression used.

The other important point to note is: if your images are 300 dpi at 100% size in your layout (as they should be) and you choose Press setting when making the PDF, compression will only be applied to images that are more than 300 dpi. Read what it says in Distillers' job option tab. So no compression will be applied if the images don't exceed 300 dpi anyway. And if they do, the compression applied (JPG or ortherwise) will only get them down to a reasonable resolution anyway.

So when making your PDF, just use the default 'Press' setting and JPG compression will automatically be applied to the images that are too-high resolution.

We have our PDF directions saying the same thing.....It is just so files move faster through the upload and pre-press process.

Personally, I never use compression when distilling a PDF....I never use the Press setting either...always custom with no downsampling, compression, anything.. I really don't care how large the PDF file is. I just created a calendar where the PDF file was 1.5GB......

Many Pre-press departments use the compression to make their jobs go faster, but the reality is the time saved in the RIP doesn't justify the possibility of a reprint because of "Artifacts" left in the photos from the JPG compression. If you have your Elements created properly and placed as Tif files, why would you want a loss of resolution?? Even the smallest of quality loss is unacceptable to me.

My $0.02 as a designer - No Compression is no problem.
My $0.02 as a Printer – Providing the Photos are correct to begin with, most people won’t notice the difference between a non compress and a JPG compressed unless they are a Color Separator....

Thanks !

Thanks for the reply all.

Nice to know we're all on the same page.