[Ohiodig] "Jellification" of Text

[Noah Stegman Rechtin]

Dear All,

I think I discovered the cause of the jellification by accident on
Wednesday! I was converting some TIFF files to PDF for send via email and
instead of right clicking and selecting "convert to Adobe PDF", I dragged
and dropped the image file in the Adobe Acrobat window. The result was a
dialog box that read:

If this is a scanned image, would you like to run scanned image
> optimization on this image? You can also change this setting under "Convert
> to PDF" options in Acrobat Preferences.
>

Upon clicking "yes", I was presented with an image that had the same sort
of jellification as other examples. (Note that "image optimization" is
*different* from the "recognize text" tool in Acrobat. The latter does not
appear to change the quality of the underlying image.) Furthermore, as I
realized today, it is possible that Acrobat will automatically apply image
optimization to any imported files without prompting the user. This may be
how the problem occurred in some of the cases seen in previous examples. (I
can't help but make a comparison to a story
<http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37176926> I read a while back about
Excel's auto-formatting function ruining a bunch of research when it
converted all of the data to dates. Another story
<http://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-rename-microsoft-excel-misreading-dates>
noted that a nomenclature committee even went as far as renaming genes as a
result.) So, I guess the lesson is: be careful how you import files!

Sincerely,
Noah Stegman Rechtin
*Tri-State Warbird Museum <http://tri-statewarbirdmuseum.org/>*
*Collections Manager & Museum Attendant*
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