Graphics in a MS PUB file are rough and overly compressed

I have created documents in Microsoft Office Publisher 2003 which contain quite nice PNG graphics that have transparent elements. However, when I print the PUB file to the Adobe PDF printer (Adobe Acrobat Pro 6), then the resulting PDF file contains really rough, overly compressed, jagged edged graphics. I have tried decreasing the compression in the Adobe PDF Document Properties by editing the conversion settings (resolution 300dpi for an in-house printer, not optimised for web viewing and JPEG maximum; and even tried with downsampling and compression both turned off). I must be missing something quite basic here, but I am at a loss to find what I need to do to return a good quality image in the PDF file. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Try printing with the Print or Press settings selection. I suspect you are simply using the Standard settings that lose a lot.

Thanks, Bill, for your reply. No, my first effort to correct this situation was to use higher quality settings than the Standard one.
- In Advanced Print Settings/Graphics and Fonts, I have set the Graphics to "Print full-resolution linnked graphics"
- Then in the Printer's Properties I edited the Adobe PDF Conversion Settings away from Standard to create a new setting (I called "In-house") with Object Level Compression=OFF, Resolution=300dpi (Print quality at 2400 dpi would have been over-the-top for my in-house printer), and in Color Images I tried both
- Downsample and Compression both turned OFF.
- Downsample=Bicubic downsampling to 300 if over 450 dpi and
Compression=JPEG (Automatic) at Maximum

All these returned rough graphics.

Is the problem possibly that I have used PNG graphics which have transparent elements?

Many thanks,
Karen

It may be the transparent aspect. I thought that had gotten fixed (though I was not one that dealt with that). Transparency used to be reported as a problem regularly and may still be an issue. I would suggest you try without transparency as a check. There are a lot of other folks here that are much more knowledgeable on graphic problems than I and I would hope they would drop by.

Try the following to see if it corrects the problem:

1. Right-click on Adobe PDF and select Properties.
2. In the Adobe PDF Properties window, select the Device Settings tab.
3 Change the Convert Gray Text To PostScript Gray setting to No.
4 Change the Convert Gray Graphics To PostScript Gray setting to No.

To "lkassuba", thank you for your suggestion. I changed the Device Settings as you described and it did not make any difference. The text comes through with no problems; it is only the PNG images with transarency settings that end up so very rough.

However, when I tried to print to a higher quality than "Standard", then I got the following error report when it failed to print:
%%[ ProductName: Distiller ]%%
%%[ Error: limitcheck; OffendingCommand: imageDistiller ]%%
Stack:
-dict-
%%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%%
%%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%

I am still running checks on the suggestion made by "Bill@VT" and will get back with those results soon.

To "Bill@VT" - yes, it does appear to be the transparency that is at the root of the problem. I went back to square one with the graphics and recreated them as plain JPGs and imported them into a new MS Publisher file. (This means not being able to make use of the background fade colour as I'd planned, but lack of the background is better looking than rough graphics.) The images then came through without a problem, even on a quality setting as low as Standard. I guess this is a 'work-around' solution, but it would be nice to be able to incorporate transparent images in overlays with my designs. Thanks to both you and "lkassuba" for looking into this issue with me.