I am using lyx to produce articles and export them as PDF. I view them with Sumatrapdf.
I am not happy with the quality of the PDFs that i get …
At lower resoultions I am getting less clear text compared to higher resolutions…
Is there a way to increase the quality at lower resolutions ?
Does changing the value of CustomScreenDPI help ?
My current monitor is a 1080p 27" , I also have a 2K 27" monitor, does changing to 2K make things better ?
Resolution is in effect fixed by the source resolution/quality and in this case Lyx.
Naturally a 96 dpi PNG image is better than 72 dpi Jpeg as PNG retains quality better for graphics. Jpeg is suited to photos, not line art or type.
Custom Screen DPI may help as it adjusts scaling, so try between say 95 and 101 and there can be two effects due to coincidence of image pixels and screen pixels such that in Acrobat “ClearType” can sometimes be bettered, However SumatraPDF based on MuPDF does not use ClearType as such. Switching monitor can work either way as it can introduce other scaling factors.
Any other way to improve the PDF quality ?
Found this article:
Could this possibly be your issue?
Russ
@Russ is correct that the choice of font you use can have a significant effect too
I am reading from your description that font issues are more noticeable on the screen when the pixels are lower resolution i.e. the pixels themselves appear larger and more granular as if seen in a magnifier. Long time since I ran Lyx but seem to recollect there were 2 forms of previewer One previewer for quick results which does not use SumatraPDF but a DVI image render. It is only the final preview with the fonts chosen that renders the PDF to pass to SumatraPDF.
As Russ has indicated this can be the source problem and is covered in the wiki
https://wiki.lyx.org/FAQ/PDF#badFonts
When I compare the PDF created by Lyx using Sumatra and Adobe Reader, The Adobe Reader has the superior quality…and yes I fixed the font issue and I am still not satisfied by the way SumatraPDF renders PDFs