@rm-rf I know that now.

I know I already threw this out here, but, the moment has come when I need this working

I usually turn notebooks into pdf using a pdf printer. Saving as pdf makes a mess.

but, image printing gets weird. Even in the print preview the image is already weird, so I feel like blaming MMA

Is there any option out there to prevent compressing or whatever MMA is doing to images before printing?

Alternatively, how can I get a decent pdf?

@Rojo What's a minimal repro? That quick test seems fine, yes?

@MichaelHale Let me see

@MichaelHale Try print previewing this

im = ExampleData[{"TestImage", "Lena"}]~ColorConvert~"Graylevel"~
   ImageResize~50;
Image[ImageData[im]~Upsample~10]

@MichaelHale and yes, that test seems to works well

@Rojo Hm, it looks like it's doing JPEG compression, when you would want uncompressed PNG for your upsampled example.

@Rojo It looks good for me in PDF if I go to save as PDF, and then set custom options for highest quality vector at 300 DPI.

1.6 MB though

@MichaelHale Yes, looks good to me too when I save as PDF, but saving as PDF has several other problems for me

that don't happen when I print as pdf

Perhaps those can be fixed but I never tried to. Several styles get all the text messed up

@MichaelHale Check this out dropbox.com/s/qi2bbvz54qa6cil/Untitled-13.pdf

WOW, it looks good with the online viewer

Looks crappy in my PC's pdf viewer

It looks good for me online, but when I download the PDF the text disappears. The image still looks fine for me in downloaded version though.

@MichaelHale Thanks for checking it out

I wonder if one could just tell MMA to print without compressing images

You could try exporting all of the tricky parts of the notebook as PNG, then copying a fresh notebook and replacing those cells with a cell of the just PNG image and then try exporting all of that as PDF.

There is an option for printing without compressing (default is JPEG medium), but it didn't do anything for me.

File->Print->Preferences->Advanced

@MichaelHale I didn't understand. Once you copy the PNG images back to the notebook, won't they become raster graphics as usual?

Well the raster upsampled image exported fine, yes? It was just the text that was messed up for me when it downloaded.

So if you made the text part of a high res raster image it may be good enough for now.

@MichaelHale Ah, got it

I would guess those advanced options are of the printer itself, and if it already receives the image compressed, then there's nothing it can do

Yea, probably

@Rojo Maybe Notebook Options->Printing Options->PrintingOptions->"GraphicsPrintingFormat"

Maybe change Automatic to Bitmap

Nevermind, none of those options worked for me.

Same here. They make sense, but artifacts remain

How does meta.stackoverflow.com/help/deleting-account work? I only want to delete Mathematica account without affecting MSE account.