Successful printout of DTRPG pdf at Kinkos

[Sargon]

I did not know exactly where to put this, and expect it to be moved. I posted this same thing at RPG.NET and thought to put it here as well, so more people will see it.

I, like a lot of other people, were concerned about DRM pdf's and if I could have them printed out. I now have no problem buying pdf's from this store.

I bought the Midnight campaign setting pdf from DriveThruRPG.

I then used Kinko's File Prep tool. I had to go into the Advanced section and click on print as image. I told the tool to print out 56 pages from the book. Basically enough info to make a small book to give to players to use for character creation. It created a kdf file.

I then took that file, a *.kdf file, to Kinkos. They then proceeded to print it out with no problems or having to activate it. These files can only be read, as far as I know, using the Kinkos program.


Some things of note.

The 56 pages I had printed out, created a 46 meg kdf file. The actual book only takes up 8.4 megs or close to that. You will probably have to burn it to a cd and take it over.

There is a way to increase the dots per inch for the graphics. I chose 1200 instead of the default 600. The pictures are not as good as the ones from the actual book, but good enough.
Next time I will increase the resolution some more. Text though is perfect.

I am looking forward to buying more products from the store, especially if and when some vendors drop there prices.

 

[trancejeremy]

Hmmm. Thanks for the info. I was curious if that would work. I've tried printing the DTRPG pdfs to a pdf file using various PDF printer drivers, and none of those worked, either crashing Windows or simply giving an error message.

Interestingly, the .kdf file produced is apparently just an encrypted pdf. There apparently are programs that will convert the kdf back into an unprotected pdf.

Which I'm going to have to try.

 

[DaveStebbins]

Thank you. This is an important development which directly addresses many poeples' concerns. It does not change my mind (yet), but it is good to know.

 

[trancejeremy]

Hmmm. I just tried this, and I can't get it to work.

"An error has been detected. The print file has not been generated"

Works on non-DRM stuff, though.

edit:

Ah! I got it working now, thanks to some additional info you posted at RPG.net.

You have to hit print, then the "Advanced" tab, then pick "Print to Image", which doesn't seem to work on all PDFs but some (most), and then print.

Also works with one of my PDF drivers, Fineprint PDFFactory.

It doesn't include the text (I guess that's where the copy protection is), but the resulting image based pdf is very clear. If big. Very very big.