Hm, the map you printed looks indeed a little bit grainy and streaky (…whereas I’m unable to determine to what extend this is due to the quality of the photo…). To check the PDF-file, I printed it out with a laser printer on paper. My print out is perfect, even better than the PC-view of the PDF-file what is not astonishing to me: the map PDF-File itself has got a resolution of 2400 dpi, thats quite a lot and more than enough for a very detailled print out. I assume, the print shop is the problem here. Sometimes they are not able to print in such a high resolution, a second problem may be the material of the printing surface, they used. What can be done? You should print out a proof copy on paper for yourself (not the whole file but one page of a “poster”, that is, a part of the map, where all details of the map style can be seen). Then you should ask your prefered copy shop to make a small proof copy before printing the whole map (optimally, they print the same page/part of the poster). Compare und judge whether the print out of the copy shop fits your requirements or not.
By the way, the initial format of the map isn’t 600(mm?), but 1620mmx860mm and, eventually, the map was reduced to smaller sizes.
A reducement of size would never lead to a decrement of quality of the graphics, its even vice versa, mostly you improve the quality.
Only enlargements of sizes could be critical. For instance, if you try to enlarge a bitmap, the quality of the bitmap wil be decreased: the same information of the graphic (number of pixels) is now shared in a larger area, that is, “stairways” result and make the bitmap clumsy. This happens only to raster graphics/bitmaps but not to vector graphics. All elements of the map (lines, curves, captions) with the exception of the map istelf ARE vector graphics.
In other words, the reduction from full size to the smaller sizes is irrelevant to the quality due to the principle of vectorizing, that is, proportionaltity and quality of the graphics remain.
