Thanks Antony and Phil!

Phil, the example I posted was actually a *very low* resolution copy to demonstrate the PDF black/grey issue. The actual bitmap is a 10Mpixel image which makes the original .xar file around 16Mb which I thought was rather too large to post

I'm going to play with the bitmap output settings to see what happens. I do recall when I set it to 300, the output came out sharper but rather more pixellated, as if an antialiasing step had been removed (I had likely chosen bitmap and not antialiased bitmap output). I will wind it up to the maximum of 600dpi to see what happens.

Is there any way to go beyond 600 dpi via this method? I have 2Gb of ram in the machine (dual Xeon too).

Thanks for your help!