Julian Robbins wrote: > How can I produce a reasonable looking 2 page (A4) PDF file that is less >> than 1 Mb? > >> I have done everything in the export to PDF to get the file size down >> (resample to 72 DPI etc). >> How do the competition manage such small file sizes? > > I have this problem a lot with datasheets I produce. > > I recommend using this script > http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Web_optimised_PDF that someone came up with > that is excellent for two reasons : > > 1: It uses ghostscript and postscript to completely reform the PDF, resulting > in far, far smaller PDF's without losing image resolution. Scribus devs have > always said that the way Scribus produces PDF's is compliant but not good at > small file size. This gets around it. I have compressed PDF's by 10 times > without any loss of image quality with changing image DPI. > > 2: The way that Scribus produces PDF's also does not form proper readable, > indexable plain text. Go to Adobe Reader and try save as text, and see what > happens. If indexation of text is important to you, then the script reforms > the PDF so the file is completely indexable - great for web PDF's, and for > Google to index it too. > > The only issues I have noticed is :- > > Stick with PDF1.4/1.5 format for export, PDF1.6 seems to give blurry text. > Dont know why. > If you use images with transparent sections, ie pngs. then the transparency > isnt respected, and you will get a black area where it should be clear. > > Good luck > > Julian >
I just tried the above perl script and it works a treat! I managed to get my 1.3 MB [email version] down to 391.6 KB - and the JPEGs are a better resolution (if I tried to view them in the original [72 dpi] PDF in anything above 100%, they looked terrible) I can even increase to 150% and they still render OK! A very happy camper :-) Just to make clear what I did: Used Scribus to create the [2 page] document, using 300 dpi JPEGs; then exported to PDF (for printing, keeping the 300 dpi for the photos). I the ran the perl script on the newly created PDF file thus: nigel at laptop:~/Documents/PDF_scripts$ ./compress-newsletter.pl /home/nigel/Hamaayan/Newsletters/September-08/Test/Sept-08-print-EN.pdf (all on one line) You have to make the perl script executable first - and don't forget the './' at the beginning. Blessings, Nigel --
