PDFs Poor Quality or Illegible Text in WFR, WCC, WEC, and WCI

New customers to WebCenter often find that many PDFs received populate in WebCenter with poor quality or illegible text. Oftentimes, zooming into the PDF in a preview window shows a low-quality array of dots. This is due to the rendering software that Capture uses. Out of the box, Capture is unable to handle PDFs with embedded fonts.

To verify embedded fonts are causing the issue in your environment:

1. Open a problematic PDF in Adobe Acrobat.
2. Right-click the document image.
3. Select the Document Properties menu item.
4. Go to the fonts tab.
5. A number of TrueType fonts will show up in the list of fonts. Most TrueType fonts are unsupported by Capture’s rendering software.

There are two solutions to fixing the embedded fonts issue:

1) Upgrade the rendering software Capture uses called Outside in Technology (OIT). This option will vastly increase the number of embedded fonts Capture can recognize, but still does not account for all fonts.

Document 1943972.1 – OIT PDF Embedded Font Support

2) The most commonly used solution is implementing Ghostscript. Ghostscript converts PDFs to TIFF. It is recommended to use a version higher than 9.15, as issues have been observed in conversion for Version 9.15 and lower. Oracle does not officially support Ghostscript, but has created several Knowledge Base articles around implementing it.

Document 2195444.1 – How to Configure WebCenter Enterprise Capture Document Conversion Processor 12c to use GhostScript to Convert PDF Documents to TIF Format

NOTE:1617527.1 – Statement of Policy Regarding WebCenter Enterprise Capture and the Support of GhostScript

NOTE:1909021.1 – Sample Import Processor Script (Email Jobs Only) for Converting PDF to TIFF Using GhostScript

NOTE:2195444.1 – How to Configure WebCenter Enterprise Capture Document Conversion Processor 12c to use GhostScript to Convert PDF Documents to TIF Format

NOTE:2283577.1 – Invoice Image Conversion Results in Poor Image Quality

Is your organization facing issues with poor-quality PDFs in WebCenter? Do you need help configuring WebCenter to minimize issues such as dithering (blackening of images)? Contact Inspired ECM for assistance.