GeoPDF Generation
I’ve been fiddling around with GeoPDF generation in ArcGIS 9.3 this week and its been quite frustrating. The added functionality is really very very good and considering this is their first release it works remarkably well. I have even had some maps submitted to the Journal of Maps that make good use of vector layers within the PDFs (and indeed some authors who don’t realise they are exporting GeoPDFs).
I am in the final stages of PDFing two large (in terms of filesize) maps, one with a large raster backdrop and some complex vector layers, the other with a very large raster backdrop!! The first map was being rendered almost exactly “as seen on screen” and incredibly quickly. However ArcGIS appears to be indiscriminately rasterizing some elements of the map and leaving others as vectors. It makes for a bit of a mess and to be honest its hopeless; really not fit for publication. I then switched to trying Terrago’s MAP2PDF which uses a totally different rendering engine, is much slower, but has greater control over the final product. It also deals with vector layers correctly and the final output looks much better. However it doesn’t work with one of the clipped raster layers properly, although a fix is supposedly coming.
The second map is really just a very large raster and needs to look good, but retain a small filesize. Whilst there is granular control in ArcGIS on the resolution, the JPEG “quality” is, well, pants! There are only 5 settings and only setting 3 or 4 is worth using. However the difference in quality can be significant. I wasn’t happy with the filesize/quality trade-off the ArcGIS 9.3 produces, so switched back to MAP2PDF which took 5 minutes to render the map before it crashed ArcGIS. Solution? Go back to ArcGIS 9.2 which seems to produce a better raster product
So there you have it, my totally unscientific and cursory exploration of producing PDFs of two complex/large vector and raster maps. This suggests that it is a far from mature product area. GeoPDFs are really starting to hit the big time and ESRI/Adobe appear to have big plans. But no one has got robust processing routine…. yet. I have no doubt that Adobe will get there, but its going to take time.