Official Lego Instructions - Terrible Scans

[drofnas]

Hello,

I couldn't seem to find anything in the forum regarding the terrible scans that TLG puts on their websites for the A Models of their Technic sets (only sets I checked, haven't look at others). This is very apparent when looking at the Black colored beams in these sets, it's near impossible to make out where the holes are. They have the original digital files for these instructions, why do they give us such crappy quality PDFs.

Does anyone know of a website that contains both the Official Lego Instructions as well as clean scans of these poorly done ones?

I know when I started downloading all the PDF instructions for my own sets, I went ahead and sliced up a few of my physical books and scanned them since the official ones were so bad. Thank goodness for the sheet fed double sided scanner I recently purchased.

Example: Lego 42000 - Grand Prix Racer

Edited February 14, 2013 by drofnas

[Aanchir]

TLG is a bit inconsistent about the quality of their PDF instructions. Some of them tend to have very good color quality and line quality, while others are discolored or pixelly. I agree it's a problem that should be dealt with. I understand that the discolored ones may be a result of file compression, since a smaller PDF file size is easier for the average user to download. But at the same time, this screenshot you show-- from a set this year, no less-- shows that this is far from a worthwhile sacrifice in some cases, where the resulting file becomes near-illegible.

Edited February 14, 2013 by Aanchir

[tomdobs55]

I use an app on my android phone called lego scans. seems to work pretty well for me the pictures are mostly all clear and crisp.

[Rare White Ape]

Check out the instructions for the 9493 X-Wing.

160MB!!!

Good quality, though.

[whl]

It often happens. I hate it,too.

[pbat]

Why do they use PDFs at all? Is there really someone out there actually printing them on paper dead wood? Wouldn't seamlessly zoomable scalable vector graphics (SVGs) do the trick much better, as they are both of smaller file size and of better quality?

[MikroMan]

SVGs would probably be better, but I think it'd take too much time to convert scans/CGIs to vector graphics, if it's even possible without manually adjusting everything...

[Balrog]

Depending on how they make the instructions originally, it wouldn't be that much of a problem to create SVGs from that. I don't know how TLG originally make the instructions, but I guess they could implement a proper export function to their tools easily.

[Blakbird]

I think the poor quality is intentional. LEGO wants you to buy the original set from them. The downloads are only a backup if you lose your original copy. I think LEGO is concerned that good quality digital files will allow some unscrupulous nation to print their own high quality copies and then sell them, competing with LEGO.