PDF compression

[Isnpewthacmera]

Hello,
I deal with a lot of third party pdfs that we do not create and most of them are quite lengthy. I am looking for ways to compress them but dont know a ton about acrobat, anybody have site urls or manuals that can help? using the optimizer, distiller etc is what I have been seeing but the optimizer seems to make most files bigger, not smaller, distiller has helped but the files are still not small enough, files are going from twenty meg to eight or nine, yet were looking for under a meg if possible. any idea's??

 

[davec]

What are the distiller settings you are using?

 

[Isnpewthacmera]

the generic smallest file size settings did not know i could change them. looking at that now and seeing issues that I can manipulate. Is the postscript file extension the smallest or I should say best to use or should I be using a different file extension??

 

[michaelejahn]

need more detail to advise you

need more detail to advise you

the generic smallest file size settings did not know i could change them. looking at that now and seeing issues that I can manipulate. Is the postscript file extension the smallest or I should say best to use or should I be using a different file extension??

Wow, I have no idea of what you are doing.

1. What type of PDF files are these ? Magazines, Catalogs, Sell sheets ?

2. are they mostly images ?

3. why do you need them smaller ? ( the approached used will make a difference - for example - are you mostly interested in making them 'computer screen viewable' where the images are downsampled ?

4. Are these PDF files need to be 'eBook' type files ( that is, you expect nible and fast downloads, and you want them tiny ?

 

[narseman]

PDF file sizes.

PDF file sizes.

I too get files of extremely varied quality. The size of the output file is a balanced result of number of pages, how many fonts are embedded, (fully or subset) how many graphical elements are in the file, (pictures, boxes, banners) etc.
The resolution of those graphics is probably the key factor in the final size. Anything under 150 dpi and they start to look really bad. Bt higher resolutions take up more space. How many pages are we talking about?
It may be that some your supplied files are created wrongly, where every page is saved as a graphic. This is a common error (Print As Image) and results in large files for relativley small page counts. Sometimes the same effect is created by down versioning the output file. (Make compatible with .. e.g Acro.Ver 5) These can be optimized or shrunk to a smaller size but you'll be very unhappy with the results as the resolution must be brought down. On a text page saved as a graphic 600 dpi will usually be acceptable but not great. And you may somtimes get an unwanted background effect too. You may have to educate your clients how to produce the file correctly. I wrote a simple one page guide to producing a pdf correctly, which my sales people can send to their clients.
Those files that seem to get bigger when optimized are probably comming from Acrobat 9 which supports advanced layering and layout "features" which reduce the file size. This is great for sharing files and on screen or web use, BUT when you "print" these, they are flattened (optimized) in the process, growing larger. If you optimize before printing (as most do) you can expect these to be larger than the originals. I have found no way around this, but usually the increase is not huge.
My usual procedure is to re-process every pdf I get. That is, with my version 8 Acrobat, I have a "Printer" (Print to PDF) setup at my optimum settings. This automatically takes care of 95% of my issues. In version 9, printing to a new pdf is NOT supported so normal optimization is needed, but at present, this level of PDF file is relatively rare.
I hope this has been of some help to you.
Since I also create pdfs, in my standard settings I include, Embed all fonts, subset under 10%. For my laser print, I use down sample B&W images to 600 dpi, Color images to 300 dpi. Leave the text and line settings at 1200 dpi.

 

[dleather]

As a production artist that send PDFs to lots of different places, I find it incredibly valuable to first ask what the printer/outputt-er requests or requires for the type of job I'm doing. If you haven't already, come up with some spec sheets that your customers can follow.

Files sizes really shouldn't matter if you're getting a file that meets your specs. I'd be hesitant to optimize or make anything smaller since you are likely going to compromise quality somewhere along the line.

 

[Isnpewthacmera]

sorry for the lack of info, sadly my hands are tied for talking to the creators there not creating them for me, there all manuals which are public domain most of them are ages old, they need to be small because we upload thousands and need to keep server size down. they are mostly vector images and text but some of the bigger ones are image heavy. they need to be mostly screen viewable but not completely distort when printed on 8.5 by 11 sheets not going any bigger then that printing them is not an issue because the printed versions are just for reference and ordering not trying for press quality. page count is usually 30-50. as long as the images don't blur they can be horrid most of them were taken with out dated technology. thanks for the help every one
michealejahm: i think ebook is pretty much what were looking for

 

[michaelejahn]

seek the ePub format my son

seek the ePub format my son

sorry for the lack of info, <--snip-->
michealejahm: i think ebook is pretty much what were looking for

Then, it is time for you to consider the fact the PDF file format is NOT small NOR re-flowable.

eBook = ePub. Contact Mark Logic is you want to granularize and make it small and viewable of different size screens ( like an iPhone )

As for PDF files made of SCANS of old manuals / paper documents - there are tools that convert that too...

ABBYY Fine Reader for the occasional...

ABBYY - OCR, ICR, OMR, Data Capture and Linguistic Software

- and if you have a room full of manuals that need to be converted into a stack into a searchable archive, ELAN TMC -

ELAN Technical Manual Converterâ„¢ — ELAN GMK

hope that helps !

( I used to work for ELAN )

Michael Jahn's blog

 

[JoshB]

If your content is a black and white only (not-grayscale), then you should compress the images as G4 Tiffs, ideally at some even fraction of the final output process' resolution if you know it.

If your content is grayscale, then you will want to store it as JPEG2000, you'll want to play with settings to see file-size / quality trade-off. Be sure that the JPEG is grayscale only and not RGB or CMYK.

 

[Greg_Firestone]

Hi Isnpewthacmera,

So if I understand correctly, you're looking for a quality level more for onscreen use but the user may at times print them out to a local printer, like an inject or a laser printer. I apologize for the long list of questions . . .

Are you creating RGB documents if they have color and Grayscale only documents if they are black and white only? That should impact file size.

For the documents which have many raster images, what resolutions and image compressions are using for grayscale, color, and 1-bit images? You could try 100dpi since it's slightly better than screen resolution and use jpeg modify the compression level until you feel it just meets your quality standards. For 1-bit images, not much benefit in downsampling. I also recommend CCITT Group 4 compression for those.

Some file optimizing solutions will let you discard image data outside of an image mask. This could be useful.

What version PDF do you receive and what version do you make? Ideally if you can keep files PDF 1.4 or higher and maintain live transparency, files sizes will be smaller. If you rasterize transparency, your file size may increase as you now have more raster data.

For text and vector heavy docs, make sure you are compressing those elements. Also make sure fonts are subsetted to embed only the minimum number of fonts you'll need.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Greg