Crop out excess artwork?

[Tech]

Is there an action I can create/add to crop out excess artwork to reduce files size?

 

[abc]

Crop out

Crop out

Can you define exactly what you mean by 'crop out', there are a few actions that can help.

Crop images would be one, and probably the one you mean?

 

[the_brain]

Can you define exactly what you mean by 'crop out', there are a few actions that can help.

Crop images would be one, and probably the one you mean?

Tech,

You have a few interesting actions, but only in Pitstop 10. One of them being 'minimize file size'. You can find this in the global,change panel. It will cut your image on one of the page boxes, or the clipping paths. That way you can really get rid of any image data you don't use or want. It only works on images though not on line art.

What you can do in any version of pitstop is selecting nay objects that fall completely outside a selected area or page box and delete those.

Actions to look at:
- crop images
- select inside outside region
- remove selection

Good luck,
Bert

 

[Tech]

I'm using Pitstop Pro 7.5 and I need to crop out excess image [non-display part of images] outside of the hold picture box.

We are trying to reduce pdf files size so pages can be render faster on on tablet viewing.

 

[abc]

Tablet viewing

Tablet viewing

To be honest 7.5 is a bit before my time, but you might want to take a look at testing PitStop 10, we added some specific actions for tablets aimed at repurposing content and improving rendering speeds when viewing complex files.
We have options to handle complex vectors as well as images and we also fix a lot of the content that is unsupported on the tablet viewers.

Could be worth a look.

 

[mattbeals]

No, you can't use PitStop 7.5 to crop out masked image data. It's all there whether you like it or not. To do what you're looking at would really require editing objects in PhotoShop. But even that will be a mess. Is there a specific reason why you want to remove the excess image data other than making the size smaller?

 

[curveto]

Is there an action I can create/add to crop out excess artwork to reduce files size?

Removing clipped image data is one thing (and a useful one at that) but if your primary viewing platform is tablets (or any display media) keep in mind that you can RADICALLY (and I mean radically) reduce both image resolution and jpeg quality for those viewing domains. Images with these types of optimizations will paint in real time by virtually every PDF renderer. Some viewing environments may even benefit from reductions in image density (televisions, for example, routinely resolve to 4-6bit density even though the signaling standards imply 8bit, etc.).

It's rather pointless to bother eliminating clipped vector instructions as the rendering engine will effectively no-op vast portions of code in response to clipping. You won't see any compelling performance benefit from this optimization and data storage footprint for the same is (generally) pretty trivial. That said, it is possible for designers to be colossally stupid at times. I can recall a cutaway printed in USA Today (back in the day) that had a detailed map of the Earth clipped inside another smaller cutaway. It took 32 hours to RIP. THAT sort of design idiocy would obviously be a good candidate for clipped vector content removal (followed by electro-shock applications to the designer).

After image optimizations, the next best item for removal or optimization IMO would actually be to pay attention to embedded fonts.

 

[mattbeals]

I have to wonder if tools like Elpical Claro can "hard crop" "soft cropped" / masked images. I know that Claro Premedia Server has an InDesign plug-in that can optimize linked images. One of those optimizations is to apply cropping. So I assume that tools like Enfocus PitStop and callas pdfToolbox should be able to do the same from a technology standpoint. But vectors is something completely different.

 

[the_brain]

I have to wonder if tools like Elpical Claro can "hard crop" "soft cropped" / masked images. I know that Claro Premedia Server has an InDesign plug-in that can optimize linked images. One of those optimizations is to apply cropping. So I assume that tools like Enfocus PitStop and callas pdfToolbox should be able to do the same from a technology standpoint. But vectors is something completely different.

Matt, hard cropping of images is no longer an issue in pitstop 10. Hard cropping vector element is indeed a valid and useful feature request.

Bert