[CS4-CS5] Is this a safe way to reduce pdf size?

I've had a couple of similar requests this week from clients: "Could you send us a smaller version of the pdf, so we can email it?" As these files weren't going to the printers, I played around a bit in Indesign and Acroba to find a solution. I know about reducing image resolution, but as these jobs had almost no bitmaps in them, so that wasn't an option.
I did notice that the pdf document overhead numbers were ridiculously high, up to 80% in one case. I tried various things, but the most effective way to educe this was by saving the pdf as a postscript file and then distilling a new pdf from it. It worked like a charm, but I'm left wondering what caused the high overhead numbers in the first place, and what happens 'under the hood' in that postscript round-trip.
Also, is this at all safe to do? I didn't notice anything out of place in the new file - it certified ok as well, but is this something to avoid or not?
Thanks for any light on this issue.

If you have a modern Acrobat, you could also check with Advanced -> Print Production -> PDF Optimizer; then, in the dialog that pops up select the "Audit Space usage" button. For a fair comparison you would have to do this with your original exported PDF and with the distilled version -- and note the numbers down or take a screen shot, because Adobe didn't think you'd want to select this as text ...
Are you saying you would feel safe sending such a reduced file to press?
Ha hum. Your new files got way smaller, beyond a fairly reasonable amount. Are you sure you didn't downsample any and all bitmaps to screen rez?
You are right, given these differences I'd send the larger file to print. But I imagine your client is going to be impressed by your compression technique.

Similar Messages

Is there a way to reduce the size of my PDF file, created (or I should say, Exported) in InDesign.

I created a 10-page sale flyer in InDesign CS5 which will be viewed on our website. When I export it as a PDF file, even with the compression at "minimum", the size is still 3.8 MB.
Is there a way to reduce the size of the PDF file? with InDesign or another tool out there?
Thanks for your help!
Blee

Rik Ramsay wrote:
To expand a little on what Jongware said, normally choosing vector over bitmap will decrease the filesize. If the vector art is very complex though, this will not be true.
Yup, a logo as bitmap takes up more space than the same as a vector -- unless the vector image is bitmap heavy (think Drop Shadow, Outline Glow; these are actually bitmap effects).
Also, check your PDF version. "Older" versions do not support live transparency, the latest do. Then again, you cannot use live transparency if you suspect your viewers may be using Mac OS X, because Apple's own PDF viewer sucks big time.

A simple and free way of reducing PDF file size using Preview

Note: this is a copy and update of a 5 year old discussion in the Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard discussions which you can find here: https://discussions.apple.com/message/6109398#6109398
This is a simple and free solution I found to reduce the file size of PDFs in OS X, without the high cost and awful UI of Acrobat Pro, and with acceptable quality. I still use it every day, although I have Acrobat Pro as part of Adove Creative Cloud subscription.
Since quite a few people have found it useful and keep asking questions about the download location and destination of the filters, which have changed since 2007, I decided to write this update, and put it in this more current forum.
Here is how to install it:
Download the filters here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41548940/PDF%20compression%20filters%20%28Un zip%20and%20put%20in%20your%20Library%20folder%29.zip
Unzip the downloaded file and copy the filters in the appropriate location (see below).
Here is the appropriate location for the filters:
This assumes that your startup disk's name is "Macintosh HD". If it is different, just replace "Macintosh HD" with the name of your startup disk.
If you are running Lion or Mountain Lion (OS X 10.7.x or 10.8.x) then you should put the downloaded filters in "Macintosh HD/Library/PDF Services". This folder should already exist and contain files. Once you put the downloaded filters there, you should have for example one file with the following path:
"Macintosh HD/Library/PDF Services/Reduce to 150 dpi average quality - STANDARD COMPRESSION.qfilter"
If you are running an earlier vesion of OS X (10.6.x or earlier), then you should put the downloaded filters in "Macintosh HD/Library/Filters" and you should have for example one file with the following path:
"Macintosh HD/Library/Filters/Reduce to 150 dpi average quality - STANDARD COMPRESSION.qfilter"
Here is how to use it:
Open a PDF file using Apple's Preview app,
Choose Export (or Save As if you have on older version of Mac OS X) in the File menu,
Choose PDF as a format
In the "Quartz Filter" drop-down menu, choose a filter "Reduce to xxx dpi yyy quality"; "Reduce to 150 dpi average quality - STANDARD COMPRESSION" is a good trade-off between quality and file size
Here is how it works:
These are Quartz filters made with Apple Colorsinc Utility.
They do two things:
downsample images contained in a PDF to a target density such as 150 dpi,
enable JPEG compression for those images with a low or medium setting.
Which files does it work with?
It works with most PDF files. However:
It will generally work very well on unoptimized files such as scans made with the OS X scanning utility or PDFs produced via OS X printing dialog.
It will not further compress well-optimized (comrpessed) files and might create bigger files than the originals,
For some files it will create larger files than the originals. This can happen in particular when a PDF file contains other optomizations than image compression. There also seems to be a bug (reported to Apple) where in certain circumstances images in the target PDF are not JPEG compressed.
What to do if it does not work for a file (target PDF is too big or even larger than the original PDF)?
First,a good news: since you used a Save As or Export command, the original PDF is untouched.
You can try another filter for a smaller size at the expense of quality.
The year being 2013, it is now quite easy to send large files through the internet using Dropbox, yousendit.com, wetransfer.com etc. and you can use these services to send your original PDF file.
There are other ways of reducing the size of a PDF file, such as apps in the Mac App store, or online services such as the free and simple http://smallpdf.com
What else?
Feel free to use/distribute/package in any way you like.

Thanks ioscar.
The original link should be back online soon.
I believe this is a Dropbox error about the traffic generated by my Dropbox shared links.
I use Dropbox mainly for my business and I am pretty upset by this situation.
Since the filters themsemves are about 5KB, I doubt they are the cause for this Dropbox misbehavior!
Anyway, I submitted a support ticket to Dropbox, and hope everything will be back to normal very soon.
In the meantime, if you get the same error as ioscar when trying to download them, you can use the link in the blog posting he mentions.
This is out of topic, but for those interested, here is my understanding of what happened with Dropbox.
I did a few tests yesterday with large (up to 4GB) files and Dropbox shared links, trying to find the best way to send a 3 hour recording from French TV - French version of The Voice- to a friend's 5 year old son currently on vacation in Florida, and without access to French live or catch up TV services. One nice thing I found is that you can directly send the Dropbox download URL (the one from the Download button on the shared link page) to an AppleTV using AirFlick and it works well even for files with a large bitrate (except of course for the Dropbox maximum bandwidth per day limit!). Sadly, my Dropbox shared links were disabled before I could send anything to my friend.
I may have used a significant amount of bandwidth but nowhere near the 200GB/day limit of my Dropbox Pro account.
I see 2 possible reasons to Dropbox freaking out:
- My Dropbox Pro account is wronngly identified as a free account by Dropbox. Free Dropbox accounts have a 20GB/day limit, and it is possible that I reached this limit with my testing, I have a fast 200Mb/s internet access.
- Or Dropbox miscalculates used bandwidth, counting the total size of the file for every download begun, and I started a lot of downloads, and skipped to the end of the video a lot of times on my Apple TV.

Is there a way to reduce the size of a final PDF created for print when saving a file?

Is there a way to reduce the size of a final PDF created for print when saving in any software (especially illustrator)? I don't want any quality to decrease at the same time. Thanks!

Personally I would avoid optimizing the PDF's via Adobe Acrobat Pro unless you understand what you are removing from the PDF; having said that, it is the most effective way to reduce the file-size in the right hands.
If I am sending out layouts for commercial print I change my default Print / Export setting from Standard to PDF/A-1b:2005 (CMYK). This will resolve a lot of common print problems for print-ready documents and it should embed your fonts and flatten transparencies etc.
If your document is still too large you run an Audit Space Usage using Adobe Acrobat Pro. In the left pane enable 'Content' and then hit the button in the top left corner of the Content Pane and choose Audit Space Usage.

Is there a way to reduce the size between the lines in when creating a form in FormsCentral so that you can fit more lines on a page?

Is there a way to reduce the size between the lines in when creating a form in FormsCentral so that you can fit more lines on a page?

In the Folders Tab, right click on folder then click Reveal in Explorer. This will open an Explorer window with the folder selected. In Explorer you can right click > Properties or navigate to whatever you want to measure.

Ways of reducing file size??

Hello,
I have a 3D animation that is rendered to bmp frames.
I have inserted the animations into a Flash doc.
After editing, my final Flash movie/file is 20MB.
what are the best ways of reducing or compressing the file size down to a resonable "web-ready" level? Around 8MB or lower?
I want to avoid lowering the quality from 75%.
Please advise, thanks!
D_xyz

The primary way to reduce file size is to reduce the size of the imported content that the file is holding, meaning images and sound elements. The ways to reduce the size of those things is to either optimize them before bringing them into the Flash file, or loading them dynamically so that they are not part of the published file's weight.
In your Flash Publish Settings you can select the option to "Generate Size Report" HAving that report you can see the contributions of each piece to the overall file size, and in turn focus on them to try to bring the size of the file down.

Once combine file, it is too large to email. Is there a way to reduce the size of the file?

Combined files and now it is too large to send. Is there a way to reduce the size of the converted file in Adobe?

Hi yodonna,
Adobe Reader doesn't allow you to reduce the size of a PDF file, as Acrobat does. But, you could upload that file to your Acrobat.com account, and create an anonymous link to it using Adobe Send. Then, you could send that link via email. You can access Adobe Send at https://cloud.acrobat.com/send. The Create an Anonymous Link feature doesn't require that you have an Adobe Send subscription.
Best,
Sara

Is this a "safe" way to upgrade to lion and transfer apps/data to new imac?

I have an older imac running 10.6.8 and I am considering buying a new one.
I read a link with guidleines to upgrade to lion. My question is:
After upgrading to lion, I am going to buy a new imac and want to move to the new imac with the least inconvenience. I have a lot of music app/usb interfaces so the time to reconfigure everything would be very time consuming.
So is the "safe" way to do it?
Do a time machine backup of current configuration.
Follow the link I saw outlining upgrading from 10.6.8 to lion on my current imac.
Get everything working again on the current imac with mountain lion.
Do a time machine backup of the lion configuration.
Get the new imac and on first boot, elect to restore from the time machine backup wiping out what came installed on the new imac.
Another time machine backup on the new imac.
I should be done?
or is there a better /safer way?
I have been putting this off for almost year because of the number of apps I am running and devices I have connected. a short list.
file servers off firewire 800 and 400 ( I know I will need the thunderbolt to firewire adapters).
approx 12-18 usb devices all connected either directly or daisy chained through usb controllers connected to usb controllers.
about 10 external USB drives.
vmware
midi interfaces for piano/guitar.
m-audio fast track ultra
multiple DVD/blu-ray reader/writers
Hence my concern for a smooth transition
thanks in advance.

There is really no need to update the older iMac running 10.6 to Lion, especially if you have multiple backups of your User Data. You can easliy move or migrate data from any one of your External HDs or Server to the new iMac.
As for your current iMac:
If you plan on selling the older iMac, Lion is not transferable and you will want to sell it with a clean install of 10.6 and let the new owner upgrade.
If you plan on keeping the older iMac around for others to use and it supports Mountain Lion, then in my humble opinion Mountain Lion is the better upgrade.
As for your other devices:
• Yes, Thunderbolt to FireWire adapter
• Yes, external USB 2.0 and 3.0 devices are backwards compatible
• Sorry, I don't use vmware
• Sorry, I don't use midi interfaces
• Sorry, I don't use m-audio
• Yes, my external DVD drives work with various Mac's running 10.6 thru 10.8
Sorry I can't better answer your Audio questions. If no one else comes along with the answers here, then you might try starting another ASC question focused on those transitions.

All of a sudden, the "save" page occupies all of my screen and I can't find a way to reduce its size -- this never happened before -- very inconvenient

When I click on "save" the resulting dialogue box fills the entire screen. I'm unable to reduce its size by using the mouse to pull in the borders of the dialogue box, and I can't find any other way to reduce it. This problem appeared spontaneously. It didn't start immediately after installing a new plug-in or a new Firefox release -- it just happened one day. I've used Firefox for years and never had this very inconvenient problem before.

Is it the dialog that appears for Save Page As? Like other windows, it could be maximized/restored by double-clicking the title bar. Does that make any difference?
If not, it might be necessary to rename or delete the localstore.rdf file, which stores window positions and related settings...

What is the best way to reduce the size of my Library

Over time I have been extremely lazy and have not managed my Library very well. I have used CS2 along side Aperture and have done all the following:
1 - Edited files in CS2 and then imported them into Aperture as a TIFF or PSD
2 - Edited files in CS2 and then imported them into Aperture as a TIFF or PSD then made further adjustments in Aperture
3 - From Aperture 'opened files with external editor' (CS2) and made adjustments in CS2
4 - From Aperture 'opened files with external editor' and made adjustments in CS2 then made further adjustments in Aperture
And to top all this off I have been merrily keywording and changing the Metadata. Switching between CS2 and Aperture in this way has left me with some VERY big files (especially the TIFF that Aperture produces when I use the 'open with external editor function'.
I am looking for advice on how I can set about reducing the size of some of these files and what a suggested approach might be for 1-4 as each of them presents it's own special problem.
Here's hoping you can help
Cheers

Hard drive capacities keep increasing. Easiest (seriously) is just to buy a larger hard drive. The time expended trying to save space on previously manipulated images is seldom worth the effort.
-Allen Wicks

CS4 + CS5 Brush CURSOR outline disappear when increase the brush size

Hi
In Photoshop CS4 and CS5, the outline of the brush cursor starts to disappear when you increase the brush size.
It's OK under 65px in diameter and it's start to disappear over 66px. In 438px the outline is a single dot and over 439px the cursor outline is completely gone!
I read that it's caused by the old drivers for the video card. I'm using GeForce 8800GT and I updated the driver with the latest version form the nVidia web site. The problem is still here!
HELP?

I'm seeing a bit of a pattern of multiple people reporting problems with nVidia 8800 cards. I'm thinking nVidia isn't testing new drivers against this particular model very intensively. See my comments on video cards and drivers in this thread:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/682582
-Noel

What is the "other" component of my storage breakdown and is there a safe way to reduce it?

I have a MBP retina (mid 2012) running OSX Yosemite 10.10.3 with 250Gb of flash storage. I am constantly battling with limited space on my drive. Of the 250Gb, 103Gb is classified as "other". What is it and am I able to reduce some of it safely? I have a 1Tb external drive that has plenty of space if I am able to transfer any of that onto it.
Any help is much appreciated!!

For information about the Other category in the Storage display, see this support article. If the display seems to be inaccurate, try rebuilding the Spotlight index.
Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:
iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash
In Photos:
File ▹ Show Recently Deleted ▹ Delete All
Do the same in other applications, such as Aperture, that have an internal Trash feature. Then restart the computer. That will temporarily free up some space.
According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of available space on the startup volume (as shown in the Finder Info window) for normal operation—not the mythical 10%, 15%, or any other percentage. You also need enough space left over to allow for growth of the data. There is little or no performance advantage to having more available space than the minimum Apple recommends. Available storage space that you'll never use is wasted space.
When Time Machine backs up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of recently deleted files. The space occupied by local snapshots is reported as available by the Finder, and should be considered as such. In the Storage display of System Information, local snapshots are shown as Backups. The snapshots are automatically deleted when they expire or when free space falls below a certain level. You ordinarily don't need to, and should not, delete local snapshots yourself. If you followed bad advice to disable local snapshots by running a shell command, you may have ended up with a lot of data in the Other category. Ask for instructions in that case.
See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) or GrandPerspective (GP) to explore the volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also delete files with it, but don't do that unless you're sure that you know what you're deleting and that all data is safely backed up. That means you have multiple backups, not just one. Note that ODS only works with OS X 10.8 or later. If you're running an older OS version, use GP.
Deleting files inside a photo or iTunes library will corrupt the library. Changes to such a library must be made from within the application that created it. The same goes for Mail files.
Proceed further only if the problem isn't solved by the above steps.
ODS or GP can't see the whole filesystem when you run it just by double-clicking; it only sees files that you have permission to read. To see everything, you have to run it as root.
Back up all data now.
Install the app in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click anywhere in the corresponding line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
For ODS:
security execute-with-privileges /A*/OmniDiskSweeper.app/*/M*/* 2>&-
For GP:
security execute-with-privileges /A*/GrandPerspective.app/*/M*/* 2>&-
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.
Paste into the Terminal window by pressing command-V. You'll be prompted for your login password.
The application window will open behind other open windows. When you scan a volume, the window will eventually show all files in all folders, sorted by size. It may take a few minutes for the app to finish scanning.
I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything as root. If something needs to be deleted, make sure you know what it is and how it got there, and then delete it by other, safer, means. When in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
When you're done with the app, quit it and also quit Terminal.

Any way to reduce the size of Boot Camp partition?

I made my Boot Camp partition way big and now I'd like to smallify it by about half, down to 60G or so (it's 130G now). Is there any EASY way to do this?
Many thanks,
Pier

In Vista (Ultimate in my case), RightClick My Computer -> Manage: select Disk Management. In Vista you can shrink your (C:) Boot Camp partition which leaves OS intact but allows another install to new (D:) (extended) volume created within space. In XP, I think same can be done with Diskpart.exe which is in \System32. As I have, you can install another Windows OS to the new partition.
I can't see data from Leopard OS for the extension made, though I can see Ntfs files and copy/paste from original Windows (C:) volume bootcamp set up. I do not know if formatting the new split to Fat 32 would make it a share space for Leopard.

Is there a way to reduce the size of a palette without dragging from the bottom corner?

My work bought me a huge new Thunderbolt monitor yesterday, so I took advantage of the real estate and expanded my Layers palette to be very tall, and along with several other adjustments, saved this out as a custom workspace. Today though I am working only on a laptop offsite with no Thunderbolt and the bottom of the Layers palette is offscreen where I can't get to it. I know if I change workspaces to one of the Adobe presets it will give me a standard size Layers palette, but if possible I would like to work within my custom workspace and just change the height of the palette.
Any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance.

Did you save your workspace with a name of your choosing?
Look at the Workspace selector at the upper-right. You can instantly change overall layout by choosing different workspaces.
Save the one you have before you lose it (it's under the Window - Workspace menu), then try the different ones.
You could, for example, save two different workspaces, one for the large monitor and one for the little monitor.
For immediate relief, you could choose Essentials and start to customize again.
-Noel

Any way to reduce alias sizes?

I noticed that the file size for my aliases were 1MB+ which is ridiculous. It is apparently a custom icon issue. So okay I've figured out that much. What I can't find is a way to fix it. Are there any tricks anyone knows for shrinking them?

Troy Pickett wrote:
Are there any tricks anyone knows for shrinking them?
Yes. Down to 6 KB in Mountain Lion.
The "bad" news: it's a multi-step process, and it requires at least one shareware (i.e. non-free) application to handle one part of the process.
The good news: it's possible to automate a major part of the shrinking down to a single Finder keyboard shortcut, plus one click on a button, plus a warning confirmation. (The latter part could be probably automated even more by using an AppleScript and a terminal command while also bypassing the "shareware software step", but I didn't look into it yet.)
In general, the following post sums up the issue quite well for an overview, although it doesn't really offer a workable solution: https://discussions.apple.com/message/6443819#6443819
The solution until Leopard (OS X 10.5) used to be a simple but effective Contextual Menu Item plugin:
http://www.splook.com/Software/Shrink_Alias.html
Snow Leopard and later dropped the support for Context Menu plugins in favor of Services, so the plugin won't work out of the box anymore.
Additionally, I think since Snow Leopard (or was it in Leopard already?), apart from including the icon in the resource fork, an Alias now also includes the same icon in the data fork, effectively doubling its size. Sigh.
And the Shrink Alias plugin wasn't ever updated to handle the data fork anyway.
But there's a workaround to make Shrink Alias – and other old Contextual Menu Items – run nonetheless.
Open your ~/Library folder. It's invisible by default, but you'll get there from the Finder "Go" menu while holding the Option key.
In your Library folder create a folder named "Contextual Menu Items".
Place the ShrinkAlias.plugin in there.
Download and install the free Shortcuts application from Abracode: http://free.abracode.com/cmworkshop/shortcuts.html
There's actually two of them in the download and you may want to install both. For running Shrink Alias you need Shortcuts32.
Read the Shortcuts instructions on their webpage carefully.
(I have also noticed that you may need to add background apps ShortcutObserver and ShortcutObserver32 to your Login Items manually since the corresponding Setup command doesn't stick sometimes.)
In the Shortcut32 "Menu" tab you should assign a global shortcut to actually invoke the context menu in Finder.
When you select an Alias in Finder and press your shortcut from step 6, you should now see a contextual menu with the Shrink Alias menu item. Selecting it will already reduce the Alias size by one half, by removing the icon data from the resource fork.
But there's still the data fork…
You need an application which can edit file forks.
I know of two shareware options:
• Path Finder – an extremely powerful file browser, many people are actually using it as a full Finder replacement.
• File Utility from Limit Point Software – a relatively easy to use "one trick pony".
Both apps support the OS X Services.
• You can either use Path Finder's "Show Info" global service to open its File Info window, where you need to activate the Attributes: Dates/Forks section and delete the Data Fork.
• Or you can use File Utility's Delete Data Fork service to invoke the app's interface for the selected item. (Note that you may want to disable all its other "Delete XY" services from the System Preferences in order to prevent file damage.)
Further automation is possible by assigning Services keyboard shortcuts in System Preferences, and by using a macro utility like Keyboard Maestro. As mentioned at the beginning, it should be even possible to automate everything using Applescript and Terminal commands and compile it e.g. as Service plugin using the OS X Automator. But that requires further investigation.

[CS4-CS5] Is this a safe way to reduce pdf size?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for