gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials » STDU Viewer http://www.ghacks.net A technology news blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:51:26 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 PDF Reader Rendering Quality Comparison, Which Is The Best?http://www.ghacks.net/2010/07/02/pdf-reader-rendering-quality-comparison-which-is-the-best/ http://www.ghacks.net/2010/07/02/pdf-reader-rendering-quality-comparison-which-is-the-best/#comments Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:26:55 +0000 Martin Brinkmann http://www.ghacks.net/?p=27849 A question came up in the comments of the Foxit 4.0 release post here at Ghacks: How is the rendering quality of that pdf reader compared to that of Adobe Reader? I honestly could not tell at that time because I did not work much with pdf readers, and when I had to read a pdf I was not that much concerned about text rendering but the contents.

Still, it is a valid question. Do pdf readers render pdf documents differently, and if that’s the case, which one is the best of the pack?

Some rules had to be established for this test; All pdf readers should display the same page of the same pdf document in 100% and 200% view as well as a sample paragraph in 100%. Screenshot quality had to be the same to make it easier for anyone to spot possible quality differences in the text rendering engine.

I have also decided to only add free pdf viewers to the list.

List of pdf readers:

Test System:

  • Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
  • 8GB computer memory
  • Intel Core i7 860
  • HP w2408h widescreen monitor, 1920×1200 resolution
  • Ati Radeon 4870, latest Catalyst drivers
  • Test Pdf

The screenshots:

Thumbnails are displayed due to size limitations, click on a thumbnail to view the full sized image.

Samples

pdf reader quality samples

pdf reader quality samples

The first batch of samples shows that pdf readers display the same text in a different font sizes. Adobe Reader uses the largest font sizes while STDU Viewer the smallest, which offers a barely readable rendering of the text in that size. Quality obviously depends on a few factors that might differ from system to system.

What’s your favorite pdf reader? Let us know in the comments.

The 100% sample screenshot comparison

pdf reader quality

pdf reader quality

Now the 200% samples of the eight pdf readers

pdf reader quality 200

pdf reader quality 200

As you can see, rendering quality differs highly depending on which pdf reader has been used to display the pdf document. Adobe Reader followed by Sumatra provide a very good rendering quality. The pdf rendering quality obviously depends on a few factors that are influenced by computer hardware.

I would still recommend either Adobe Reader or Sumatra as they seem to provide the best rendering quality of all tested pdf readers. Sumatra especially for users who do not want anything to do with Adobe Reader.

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2010/07/02/pdf-reader-rendering-quality-comparison-which-is-the-best/feed/ 17 STDU Viewer For Tiff, PDF and DjVU documentshttp://www.ghacks.net/2008/07/17/stdu-viewer-for-tiff-pdf-and-djvu-documents/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/07/17/stdu-viewer-for-tiff-pdf-and-djvu-documents/#comments Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:43:23 +0000 Martin Brinkmann http://www.ghacks.net/?p=5368 I recently stumbled upon the STDU Viewer (Scientific and Technical Documentation Viewer) software which is a fast viewer for Tiff, PDF and DjVU documents. I have never heard the term DjVU before and was a bit puzzled at first. The format that is pronounced déjà vu is being used to distribute high resolution scans of documents but also of digital documents and photos on the Internet.

DjVu needs only half the size than jpg images for photos of the same quality and displays photos of the same size in a higher better quality. Look at the comparison between jpg and djvu images, very interesting and a file format to look out for.

It’s one of the favorite formats for technical documentations and scientific documents. The viewer itself is a no thrills no frills viewer that can display the supported formats. It was designed with speed in mind, it opens pdf documents as fast, or even a bit faster, than Foxit Reader which is one of the fastest of its kind.

djvu viewer

The main benefit of STDU Viewer is the support of the three mentioned formats and its speed. There is not really a reason to change from Foxit Reader to it if you only work with pdf documents on your system. If you use at least two of the formats it might be a viable alternative.

The official djvu website has a download section with additional clients for Windows, Mac and Linux plus an add-on for Microsoft Office.

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