PDF Compresser

[Raizinman]

In my work I create PDF reports that I email to customers. The reports have been getting larger and larger and due to the graphics and color in the reports they are taking up more and more space. Often a report will be 50 or 60 pages and will be 5 or 6 megs big. Many of my customers ISP’s reject files attachments that large or are on slower ISP’s so I’m left to:

1) Rescan at a much lower resolution until it fits in the 2 or so meg range.
2) Scan in Black or white until it fits in the 2 or so meg range. Customers want color.
3) Break up the file and send two or three emails. Customers don’t like to do this.

I recently tried a few of the PDF compressors. One, after 2 or 3 minutes of compressing, reduced the file from 3.4 megs to 3.3 megs. Big deal. Another reduced the PDF file from 3.4 megs to 2.2 megs, but dramatically reduced the quality. This was a $50 package that I was using on a free 30 day trial. I don’t need a $50 package to reduce the quality, heck I can do that myself.

Is anyone familiar with a program that will reduce/compress the size of a PDF, perhaps by 50% or more?

 

[corkyg]

Cut the pixel dimensions of your graphics to an acceptable email standard. This is easily done with a program like Irfanview. Just resize the graphics to about 800x600 pixels. PDF files are already compressed.

IOW, adjust the image sizes before creating the PDF file.

 

[Jeff7]

What program is being used to make the reports in the first place?

Are you creating vector graphics, or are you using raster graphics (JPEG/PNG/BMP), something like a scanned picture or photograph?
(If you zoom in to maximum magnification, vectors, particularly diagonal ones, would still have perfectly sharp edges.)

I've got some old version of Acrobat Professional at work, and it's got a Reduce Filesize option, which applies some manner of compression to the document. It's handy when I export multi-page PDF drawings from Pro/Engineer, as they are not at all compressed. It's all black-and-white vector graphics, which can usually compress very well, so a 3MB file might go down to 700kB. Interestingly, it's less effective on 1-2 page files, which will usually start out at somewhere around 75kB, and then they will increase by a few kilobytes after going through the Reduce Filesize routine.

But if a PDF is using raster graphics, the only ways to reduce the filesize there might be to use better image compression on the pictures, or else have the compressor resample the images to a lower dpi. If you're putting a massive JPEG into the page from a scanner or camera and then resizing it, the PDF may well still hold the original (large) image. Resampling it when saving would reduce the size of the file; the quality will of course decline as well, but so long as the reader does not need to be able to make out every single minute detail that the scanner could see, you'll be fine.

 

[jjsbasmt]

I use PDF Converter Pro 7 by Nuance, and it allows me to split a pdf by numerous ways such as pages, file size, and several others. I split a 4 MB file into 2 files as a test and emailed to myself. Nitro PDF and Adobe Reader X both opened the files up as a set automatically. Since I don't know which of the many PDF programs out there your customers are using, I'm not sure I know of another way to solve your problem other than what corkyg and Jeff7 have suggested.

 

[rivan]

The advice thus far has been sound, but I'll add to it:

There are lots of things you can do to reduce PDF sizes, but those will often depend on the software you have at hand and what application you're producing your PDFs in, and how you're producing the PDF itself.

- If you're actually scanning, be sure you're creating the most efficient scans you can by choosing the most appropriate color space (i.e. don't scan black and white pages as RGB - greyscale or 1-bit is more appropriate).
- Use vector images where possible - if you have a logo in a footer, try to get a vector version.
- Limit the number of fonts you use, and subset if you need to embed them.
- On fonts, avoid using "Bold" STYLE (usually found in applications like Office). If you have a bold version of the font (it shows up in your font list as "Soandso Bold" that's fine, but ""Soandso" with the B button clicked is bad. It fakes bold by duplicating and offsetting many copies of the text.
- Crop your images tightly. A white pixel uses just as much data as any other color.
- If you have URLs, metadata or other content streams that might be ending up in your PDF, see if the software you have can discard it.
- Some applications (like Office) produce TERRIBLE, overly-complex postscript on things like tables and charts - if you have the software to clean it up, do so.

Once you have all of that squared away, the only place to trim is your images, and you can do that in one of two ways: higher compression or lower resolution. Finding a balance that works for you and your end users may take some experimentation.

I have a LOT of experience with PDFs and getting them smaller. If you'd like to send me a sample of the PDF you're trying to wrangle, I'd be happy to take a look at it and give more specific advice. Shoot me a PM, as I probably wont monitor this thread.