Has anyone heard of cleaning numbers to make smaller files?

[michaelejahn]

@ juliek33

If this were our owner or my direct supervisor that was concerned about this...

I would take 5 or 10 jobs and process them / print them as normal. I would make note of the time it took (without this 'decimal editing' intervention )

I would then perform this file saving technique ( documenting how much time it took to perform this task )

I would consider / record labor as a cost ( that is, how much did it cost to perform this ) - I would consider / record exactly how much smaller the file size was, then consider / calculate 'how much extra drive space this takes ( probably fractions of a penny BTW )

I doubt that file file would impose or RIP faster, but consider / record that.

As most RIPS tend to round to the nearest point, it is important that your and your boss understand that this will MOVE the position or RESIZE the image or vector file. you need to compare the before and after ( make a proof, even if it is a Black & White ) to check HOW MUCH it moved...

I think the exercise will show that it takes too much time for too little benefit and risks undesired / non-requested movement of items.

I would like to share that one of our PressWise customer takes in print orders from ShutterFly - where they print things like Calendars and greeting cards - they took in nearly 4,000 orders YESTERDAY ( yes, that is 4000 orders of a quantity of 1 each ) - I can't image them opening each PDF and doing such a thing in Enfocus PitStop ) - these orders come in, some impose 2 up, 4x6 cards auto-impose 8 up on a 13x19 and print automatically ( no humans touch this until they load a stack of sheets in the slitter )

So, I would be talking to your boss about automation, not hand tooling.

My two cents...

 

[Bob@MidAmerican]

Load of crap

Load of crap

It really all depends on how you export the file.

I just had an InDesign file and links that came in at over 3gb, 28 pg book. When I did the job I used High Quality print, added bleeds and marks and unchecked compress text and line art. I got a pdf that is 28.6 mb and actually on press right now and looks fine. The client is here on a press proof and they think so too.

Just for grins I re-proscessed it and turned off all compression and wound up with a 1.02 gb pdf.

Which way would you go?

 

[SWTilden]

Wow. What a concept. You should grab onto it and help them implement it company wide. Require the sales force to go into the database and convert all their phone numbers to even thousands. Think of the space you could save there!

 

[michaelejahn]

@ Bob@MidAmerican -- I suppose this would depend on the images within that print project. If they were simple day to day pictures from the family and this was a Photobook, setting the JPEG quality to High (10) and printing on an Indigo, NexPress or iGen - you would be hard pressed to see any difference whatsoever between the print work from that and no compression. I think we can assume you understand that - 1. The images were probably already compressed when placed into the document and already had JPEG artifacts and 2. The print buyer probably could care less.

This has nothing to do whatsoever with what the OP is about.

 

[Bob@MidAmerican]

Nope.

These where all either tiffs or psd's.

We are printing it offset on 24x36" sheet on a KBA.

 

[michaelejahn]

@ Bob@MidAmerica - so, how were the images created - digital photography ? What Cameras export to TIFF ? Are they exporting from RAW to uncompressed TIFF ? ( why ? what is subject matter - micrometers or imaging targets ? ) I mean, if this is a catalog of typical items, sorry, do not see how compression at High Quality ( 10 ) would be any different on the press sheet that uncompressed. PSD files ( like TIFF ) can use ZIP (lossless ) but again, I always question "what were the files "from" ?

 

[Stephen Marsh]

That's why you NEVER get rid of or replace the original image.

If you have an oversized image, place it in InDesign and scale it down, say 50%, then you will lose the benefit of any sharpening you might have applied to the original image. Sharpening is best applied at output size, or as close to output size as possible.

Prepression: Scripting

The links in the blog post above are now broken. I have attached them in a .zip archive to this post. I would love a copy of Shane Stanleys' AppleScript for InDesign/Photoshop, however the InDesign scripts in the attached archive work well enough.


Stephen Marsh

 

[Bob@MidAmerican]

No idea they came from the client and I'm not going into 70 hi-rz images to look for data. I'm done playing with this one.

I was just offering a suggestion.

I don't know how this whole image thing became part of this thread. That was no where in the orig post, it was only about position.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

Because of the type of sampling? And, what do you mean when you say "better results"?

Resizing in PShop means that you can only use the image at that size or smaller. Next week, when you need it at a larger size, you've got a problem.

Hi Rich, by “better” I meant either visually sharper and/or possibly without “aliasing” or “moiré” artefacts for objects that contain repeating patterns.

It is common for folk to place very high resolution images in layout and then let the PDF generation resample the insanely high effective resolution down to a 300ppi or whatever the PDF setting uses. These large images may or may not be sharpened (or have been “spotted” for dust/scratch removal, or had grain or noise reduced etc). Due to the large interpolation, the final image is quite soft, similar to applying a minor Gaussian blur to a correctly prepared image at final size/resolution. Then these soft images are screened and output and the result is further softened.

Interpolation introduces softness. Bicubic has a minor sharpening effect built in, Bicubic Sharper has a stronger sharpening effect built in and I presume that Bicubic Softer has no sharpening effect built in. None of these sharpening effects compare to output sharpening. Therefore interpolating during PDF generation will by nature introduce softness to the image and there is no output sharpening being applied. Of course, one could use the touch up image tool to edit each image in Photoshop and update the PDF content (presuming that Photoshop can handle the colour mode of the PDF image).

Regarding “aliasing” and image content “moiré” introduced by resampling, interpolation method does come into play depending on image content, although this may not be a concern for most image content or sizing. That being said, perhaps having all of the resizing methods available in Photoshop could be beneficial. The topic of interpolation aliasing really deserves another separate topic thread.

The upcoming PitStop 12 release can now sharpen images directly in a PDF, which is a good addition to the existing tools.

P.S. The other week I was helping a customer with their web2print, a customer had uploaded a CMYK 2 page DL flyer that was over 200mb. One side of the job had three images ranging from 1300-1800ppi, when an effective resolution of 225-300ppi would have been ample. Reducing the three images down to 300 ppi resulted in an uncompressed PDF with a file size of 9 mb, while adding maximum quality JPEG compression to the optimisation resulted in a file size of 1.8 mb.


Stephen Marsh

 

[Stephen Marsh]

I don't know how this whole image thing became part of this thread. That was no where in the orig post, it was only about position.

Bob, it is the nature of unmoderated internet forums, topic threads can expand and digress beyond the original point, even more so once the original question has been discussed/covered.

P.S. It would not surprise me if the same people who are worried about rounding off co-ordinates of objects, are placing oversize images and reducing them down to very high effective resolutions.


Stephen Marsh

 

[Topher]

I have spent 25+ years in this industry. I have never heard of, or used this method, ever.

 

[mattbeals]

Sounds like voodoo

 

[Shawn]

I'll bet that switching to some premium cables would reduce friction and make those files come out even quicker.

 

[patrick.mendyka]

..........

 

[mbeach]

I agree with Cathie and Stephen. Changing the decimals on the coordinates does nothing for file size. You are just changing the location by 100th or 1000th. I will often change the numbers for personal convenience of alignment but it doesn't affect my file size. If I want my PDF to keep resolution and be a smaller file, I will flatten the file or run optimizer to eliminate unneeded layers and junk.

 

[kewlbigdan]

Please argue back that eMail documents with an EVEN number of characters are easier for the computer to compress and send than eMails with a ODD number of characters. This will decrease your bandwidth and inbox usage.

They do seem gullible.