What are the differences Between High Quality Print & Press Quality PDF presets in Adobe Acrobat?

Emma Davis
Emma Davis Content Strategist at 4OVER4.COM
May 8, 2025

Both the Standard and Professional versions of Adobe Acrobat enable you to create and fine-tune PDF files depending on if they will be used for low resolution online use, or high-resolution print production. For High Resolution Print Production, two of the most commonly used presets are called "High Quality Print" & "Press Quality". According to Adobe themselves: High Quality Print. Creates PDFs for quality printing on desktop printers and proofing devices. This preset uses PDF 1.4, downsamples color and grayscale images to 300 dpi and monochrome images to 1200 dpi, embeds subsets of all fonts, leaves color unchanged, and does not flatten transparency (for file types capable of transparency). These PDFs can be opened in Acrobat 5.0 and Acrobat Reader 5.0 and later. In InDesign, this preset also creates tagged PDFs. Press Quality. Creates PDF files for high-quality print production (for example, for digital printing or for separations to an imagesetter or platesetter), but does not cre…

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