Question for an ADMIN in the Audio and Electronics section?

[Bill Merchant]

Tony, each page is an image, which makes the type very difficult to read. I think the PDF was created through a bit-mapping process, capturing printer bits. Yours were the same questions I asked ualdriver.

[ualdriver]

Originally Posted by TonyPSchaefer

The Control Panel's showing that there's no limit to file size on PDFs. So that's odd.

Let me ask: when you built the PDF, what was the format of the images you imported. Did you develop the PDF in Adobe or did you do it in something like Microsoft Word and then use something like Distiller or CuteFTP to convert it.

I develop training and technical documentation and have some experience with large file sizes. If you describe the development process, perhaps we can work to streamline the original in order to further shrink it via PDF.

Hi Tony-

I don't care to shrink the size of my final pdf product in particular. I just assumed I couldn't put it on the forum because it was too big as when I tried to upload it I got the error message in post #1. If you're an admin, I'll e-mail it to you if you want and perhaps you'll have more luck posting it.

I created the original product in Broderbund PrintShop 20-something, but not the latest one. The Broderbund product allows you to create a 150dpi .pdf file from the Broderbund format. Since I assume few can read that type of file, I did a "save as" .pdf and it took my 1.7mb Broderbund file and turned it into a 15.7mb .pdf file. I also cut and pasted the pages into a Word 2003 document, but it was still just as big and loss some of the formatting.

Anyway, that's where I am.

Thanks

[priusenvy]

Try printing to "Adobe PDF" instead of saving directly out of the application to PDF. It's unlikely your application is sophisticated enough to do a real export to PDF. It likely just created full-size images for each page, and created a simple PDF document whose pages each consist of a single image.

By printing to PDF, you have a chance of preserving all of the vector line art and text, which would likely give you a much smaller file size. OTOH, if your document is all full-page images, there probably isn't much that can be done to really get the document size down.

[ualdriver]

Originally Posted by priusenvy

Try printing to "Adobe PDF" instead of saving directly out of the application to PDF. It's unlikely your application is sophisticated enough to do a real export to PDF. It likely just created full-size images for each page, and created a simple PDF document whose pages each consist of a single image.

By printing to PDF, you have a chance of preserving all of the vector line art and text, which would likely give you a much smaller file size. OTOH, if your document is all full-page images, there probably isn't much that can be done to really get the document size down.

Unfortunately I am away from that computer for a couple of days, but what exactly does "printing to PDF do?" Will that make a PDF file somehow?

Thanks

[priusenvy]

Originally Posted by ualdriver

Unfortunately I am away from that computer for a couple of days, but what exactly does "printing to PDF do?" Will that make a PDF file somehow?

Thanks

Well, technically what it does is print the document using the Adobe PostScript driver, and then run Acrobat Distiller in the background to convert it into PDF. But all most users need to know is that they have a printer called "Adobe PDF" (in recent versions of Acrobat), which, when they print to it, produces a PDF file.

This will only make a difference if the printing path of the application draws the graphics differently than the PDF export path (I somehow missed previous posts which confirmed my suspicions about this application). If it prints by sending a full-page image to the print driver, it won't make any difference.

[ualdriver]

Originally Posted by priusenvy

Well, technically what it does is print the document using the Adobe PostScript driver, and then run Acrobat Distiller in the background to convert it into PDF. But all most users need to know is that they have a printer called "Adobe PDF" (in recent versions of Acrobat), which, when they print to it, produces a PDF file.

This will only make a difference if the printing path of the application draws the graphics differently than the PDF export path (I somehow missed previous posts which confirmed my suspicions about this application). If it prints by sending a full-page image to the print driver, it won't make any difference.

OK thanks. I'll give it a try when I get home.

I guess, though, I'm still wondering why I am getting the error message from Post#1 when I try to upload the file. It seems like finding the solution to that problem may be easier than trying to shrink/modify the file.

[priusenvy]

Oh wait, unless you have Acrobat you won't be able to print to Distiller and create a PDF. The easiest thing might be to print to a PostScript file, and then ask someone with Acrobat to distill the file for you. In order to do that, you need to have at least one PostScript printer installed, and then check the "Print to file" option in the print dialog. There are also some free packages out there that utilize GhostScript to create a PDF for you, but they're not for the novice.

[ualdriver]

Bill-

Are you able to post the file I sent you via e-mail to this forum? Maybe you can post it?

Thanks,
ualdriver

[Submarine Dude]

If the OP doesn't have Adobe Acrobat he can always download/install something like PrimoPDF (a free PDF maker).

[ualdriver]

Originally Posted by Submarine Dude

If the OP doesn't have Adobe Acrobat he can always download/install something like PrimoPDF (a free PDF maker).

Thanks. I think I'm just going to try to recreate it in Word and repost.