Running reduce file size results in excessive I/O

I'm running Acrobat 9 Std on Windows XP. I've noticed many times that when I load a PDF into Acrobat and select the reduce file size option, the amount of I/O and time taken to completion seems extraordinarily large. By far the longest part of the process is subsetting embedded fonts. For example, at the moment I have a file size reduction running on an 80 page 10Mb PDF. So far it has been running for about an hour, and Task Manager shows that Acrobat is using almost 600Mb of RAM, a fairly constant 55-60% of CPU, and I/O reads are over 10Gb and writes over 15Gb. The computer has 4Gb of memory and Acrobat is the only application running, so swapping is not the cause of the slowness. I have other larger manuals (some of them about 800 pages long) that I periodically need to run this process on, and those can take almost a day to complete the size reduction, with Acrobat reading and writing over 100Gb to complete the size reduction.
These manuals are all produced by running texi2pdf on the texinfo source (both HTML and PDF get produced from the one set of source files), so there is nothing I can do at PDF creation time about the size of the created files. I can usually achieve about a ~50% size reduction by running them through Acrobat, but the way that it does this seems extremely inefficient.

You might also want to look at the PDF a bit. You can check the document properties to see what fonts are included. Sometimes with LaTeX, a new set of fonts is included for each graphic or such. I have seen some wild results that really bloat the file. Also, you might try some of the preflight scripts to see if they can resolve some of the issues.
Might the PDF actually be a graphic collection and not contain any text? There are several possible solutions, some that might help are not generally recommended, but knowing what the PDF is like would help. If you could extract a few pages and post them someplace (dropbox or acrobat.com possibly), we could give a better answer maybe.

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Reduce File Size Crash

One of our G5 iMacs has a problem with running Reduce FIle Size in Acrobat Pro 7.0.9 and crashes every time. We've tried different compatibility, but each time it starts working on the images within the pdf, boom!
I've tried re-installing Acrobat with the same results. The full CS2 suite is installed, are there any user level prefs I can trash? Any help would be appreciated... thanks!

The G4 Macs at my school had the same problem, until they upgraded to CS3. I think it was probably a bug in Acrobat 7... have you installed all the latest updates? Check the updates section in Adobe downloads, all the updates for CS2 are still available. If that doesn't solve the problem, I would suggest upgrading to Acrobat 8, or CS3 if possible.
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Reduce File Size causes images to be blurry

I created a document in Pages '09 that contains several masked images, resulting in a really large file size. I clicked Reduce File Size to get rid of the cropped parts of the images. Unfortunately, the images are now blurry. Any way to mask or crop a picture, or use Reduce File Size, without loss of image quality?

The images are being reduced to 72dpi with no sharpening that I can see and the excess image outside the masking shape doesn't seem to get trimmed. I suspect you then saved to a pdf with a lower quality setting which would have given a 2nd reduction in quality on top of the first.
So the best option is to take your images into Preview, crop them, reduce their resolution and sharpen them then bring them back into your Pages layout before exporting to pdf.
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How to reduce file size when using batch processing?

I use File > Process Multiple Files to batch process photos to a smaller file size along with adding my watermark. I've played with many different settings and no matter what I choose, I can't get my average file size to be less than about 200k. However, when I've exported the same photos using iPhoto, I can get the file size to about half of that with no difference (to my naked eye at least) in quality.
I definitely want to keep the height at 768 pixels so that needs to stay constant.
My current settings in batch processing (average file size = 200 kb)
Resize images with a height constraint of 768 pixels at 150dpi
What I've tried:
Resize at 72dpi (reduced file size by about 5kb)
convert file to JPEG low quality (reduced file size by about 10kb)
convert file to JPEG medium quality (not much difference in file size)
I'm using PSE 10 on a Mac running Lion.
Thank you in advance for your help!

You should go with default settings of Optimizer.
One difference between default settings of Optimizer and Reduce file size is that Optimizer does not guarantee a reduction in file size (if your Optimizer settings lead to an increase in file size, that's what you will get).
With Acrobat 9, the default setting in Optimizer has an additional setting which would not do an image optimization that results in increase of file size. In that sense it would in most cases give a smaller file.

How do you reduce file size of a PDF if Save As doesnt work?

I have been trying to reduce the size of a PDF, using the Save As > Optimized PDF method.
I have also tried Save As > Reduced Size PDF.
This is on a file made up of 20 pages of full page Jpegs. (These were generated by the script in Photoshop that generates Jpeg files from Layer Comps within the document.)
If I use Reduced Size PDF, I get a greatly reduced file size but the image quality suffers greatly. (Lots of artifacts and blurryness)
There are no options to choose the level of compression I want.
If I use Optimized PDF method, I cant seem to reduce the file size no matter what I set the Jpeg compression to.
Is there some way to cut the size of the file down but not lose so much image quality?
Any suggestions?

Part of the problem here is that the files that are produced when I run the script to output files from layer comps are very big.
If I "save for web" for each layer comp, I wind up with way smaller Jpegs. Thus a much smaller PDF.
So the question is: Can you make the script, Layer Comps to Files, create smaller more optimized Jpegs? (Like you get when you save for web)

PDF reduce file size filters and CMYK to RGB conversion

This doesn't seem to be on-topic to this forum, but I'm hoping someone here has the expertise to answer my question. We have some scripts which take a series of press-quality pdfs and use the "reduce file size" filter to prepare them for viewing on the web. We run these scripts on a 10.4 machine, and the filter works very well, reliably reducing file sizes of all sorts of pages.
When we tried to upgrade the machine, we discovered that the quartz filtering has changed in 10.5 and 10.6. While it's usually an improvement, getting maybe 5-10% better compression ratios, it has become unreliable in that about 5% of my files fail spectacularly -- they blow up to 3, 4, 5, 6 times the original size.
The other thing that happens is that the 10.5/10.6 filters munge the colors up. I found the solution to this -- in the ColorSynchUtility, make a duplicate of the Reduce File Size filter, and add a Color Management Component called Convert To Profile. This allows me to set a filter that converts the CMYK content to RGB. The problem is that there are about 40 choices of profiles, and it's not at all clear what I should use. Many of them have printer manufacturer's names in them, some say "Adobe", others have cryptic codes (probably referring to various RFCs and schemes). I've tried a couple of the ones that don't look like they are for printers, basically chosen at random. They all produce files of slightly different sizes for the reductions that go well, but on the files that blow up, some filters are better than others. (For example, I have a 5MB page which reduces to 1.4MB with the 10.4 filter, but blows up to 27MB with the "sRGB IE61966-2.1" profile, but only 12MB with the "Adobe RGB" profile.)
So I have 2 questions:
1) Is there any way to configure a 10.5/10.6 custom profile so that it behaves as reliably as the 10.4 "stock" PDF Reduce File Size works? It doesn't have to be the most wonderful compression algorithm out there, just so that it never or rarely has a file blow up in size.
2) For converting press documents to pdfs that are going to go on the web, what is a good "Convert to profile" to use of the 40-some choices on the pull-down menu?

Cathy,
You have posted your question in a forum dedicated to the Final Cut Studio application Color. It is a very specialized program to grade (adjust) the color in video/film images. We know nothing regarding PDFs.
Have you tried posting this on an Adobe support site?
Good luck,
x

PDF Reduce File Size makes certain pdfs HUGE

Generally reduce file size works great for me but certain files, those coming from someone using Microsoft Publisher in particular, result in larger pdfs. She sends me newsletters for a website and sometimes the 3 page pdfs are 2-4mb. I tried opening in Preview and re-saving them using the Reduce File Size filter and the result is that they ballon up to 50-100mb!! Info for the file reveals that the pdf producer is GPL Ghostscript 8.15 and the content creator is PScript5.dll Version 5.2.2. I seem to be able to open and reduce file size using Acrobat so I'm not quite sure why Preview is choking on them.

geekinthegarden wrote:
Generally reduce file size works great...
Microsoft Publisher...Ghostscript...PScript5.dll
I seem to be able to open and reduce file size using Acrobat so I'm not quite sure why Preview is choking on them.
Hi geekinthegarden- This does not surprise me. There are many variations and reiterations in specifications of the PDF format.
Going from Ghostscript language interpreter, to Apple in rendering could introduce complications which we will not be able to sort out in this forum encapsulating a complete description of a fixed-layout 2D documents that includes the text, fonts, images, and 2D vector graphics which compose the documents.
Suffice to say it is not a perfect science.
Print PDF has a compress PDF file option as well as ColorSynch in your /Utilities folder +reduce file size+ option for PDF's. This may or may not be of use.
You found your workaround using Acrobat, this is part of the value of having more than one PDF viewer, good computing!

Making a interactive PDF from indesign, but it's too big. Tried to reduce file size in Acrobat, but

Making a interactive PDF from indesign, but it's too big. Tried to reduce file size in Acrobat, but it does not reduce file size.

Use the Optimize PDF command in Acrobat, it gives you more control. I think it's under the Advanced menu in Acrobat 9 Pro and File > Save As > Optimized PDF in Acrobat X Pro.
You might try playing around with different settings. You can also click the Audit Space button at the upper right to see if its from images or other things causing the file size problem.
Unfortunately, InDesign doesn't write interactivity in a very optimized way. You get better results with buttons, for example, creating them in Acrobat Pro and using the Duplicate command to duplicate them across multiple pages.

How do I reduce file size in Adobe 9.4.5?

Hello,
I'm using Adobe 9.4.5. I can't figure out how to reduce file size. My 'save as' options don't offer this because they only offer 'save a copy' or 'save as text'. And I don't have the 'Document/reduce file size' option. It's simply not there.
I'd appreciate any advice on how to do this.
Many thanks.

You can also try Document>Reduce File Size. The PDF Optimizer has more features, but Reduce File Size my meet your need. I find different results with both methods, making me sometimes wonder which is the best approach.

PDF CMYK TIF Color Changes on "Reduce File Size"

I run a Mac G4 MDD w/1GB Memory and OSX 10.4.11. Use Acrobat Pro 8.1.2 for PDF viewing, manipulation, forms, making large size files smaller, etc. Recently, I noticed an odd color change on one of 72 ads I am doing for a small 24-page publication. The background image of the ad is a CMYK TIF file placed in a QXP 7.3.1 document. After working on a revision to a previous ad, using the same set-up in QXP, the ad I created, using Output to PDF, opened in AcroPro correctly rendering the ad and background as the other 31 ads I had been working from or on. All the ads are different and have different backgrounds as well. Each ad opened in AcroPro has been made smaller by selecting "Reduce File Size" with no changes to color, drop shadows or text. But, when I selected that (RFS) menu for the 32nd ad, that background color changed completely to a lighter and much more contrasty image. I checked the TIFF background file in PS CS2 to see if it was CMYK or any different than the others. It was like the others, properly rendered and saved, but was much deeper in color. I went back into QXP and noticed the TIFF file in question had a 30% opacity selected to the image. I thought if I saved the original TIFF in PS with a screen tint overtop and flattened to the same look as the intended ad that would solve my problem. I placed that new TIFF background into the ad in QXP and made sure the opacity was 100% and output PDF as I had previously. Unfortunately, the ad turned out exactly the same with the same color shift. There must be something else causing this color change to occur, so if someone else has experienced this and can suggest an answer or posting that may help please advise. Thanks

Cathy,
You have posted your question in a forum dedicated to the Final Cut Studio application Color. It is a very specialized program to grade (adjust) the color in video/film images. We know nothing regarding PDFs.
Have you tried posting this on an Adobe support site?
Good luck,
x

"Reduce File Size" Spaces/Spreads out text...

I have a 12-page newsletter created in InDesign CS4. I run it through our ApogeeX workflow for production PDF output. I need to take that PDF and reduce the file size down so as to email a copy to the client for proofing purposes only.
Using the "Reduce File Size" in Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro splits up lines of text, letters within words, etc. Anyone else experience this and have a solution/suggestion?
"downturn, working with the national media to combat" becomes
"downturn, w orking w ith t he n ational m edia t o c ombat"
"The decline on the national level may be due to a" becomes
"The de cline on t he na tional l evel ma y b e due t o a". etc.
This has just been happening since we upgraded from CS2 to CS4 this past week. Thoughts?

I have this same font issue when I use AA9 to Reduce file size or Optimize. If optimize is doing it also, what option in the optimize menus can I shut off to avoid this. Currently I have had to use AA8 to get around this.
Tips appreciated!
Cassie

How to reduce file size in Acrobat XI?

How can I to reduce the file size is Acrobat XI Pro? Up until v.9, it was just a matter of opening the pulldown menu Documents > Reduce File Size. and then some more. How's that done in the newer versions of Acrobat?
This was simple and easy:

Works like a charm... I have a pdf file of a A1 size drawing that went from 6,7 to 1.7 Mb. The rendered image became slightly grainier (hardly noticable), but the text recognition stayed intact. Magnificent!
FYI I've tested this file size reduction in three different runs:
Save As Other... > Reduced Size PDF... (Acrobat 1.4 comp.) 1,69 Mb
Save As Other... > Reduced Size PDF... (Acrobat 1.6 comp.) 1,75 Mb
Save As Other... > Optimized PDF... 1,73 Mb

Reduce File Size Errors

I am using Adobe Acrobat 9 standard on windows 7 home premium 64-bit. When I go to, document, reduce file size in adobe, I am getting 2 different error messages. It does not allow me to reduce the file size after I get these errors. Screen shots are below. Please help!!!!!

@akash_gupta I just ran the upadte and am now running 9.5.5... After I ran the update I restared my computer, opend the PDF, hit reduce file size and got the error message below. See screen shot below. Problem still not resolved.

Reduce File Size doesn't work!

When I click the (new) option 'Reduce File Size' in Keynote '09 the app prompts a estimated new size which is smaller than the current size. When I click on 'Reduce' the app doesn't do anything except for showing an error report which tells me something like: "..the file size was not reduced", for all of the files included. They are just regular .jpg/.png and .psd files. Did anyone else notice this bug..?

PeterBreis0807 wrote:
I'd say if it is a very large file with multiple large images, it might not be actually freezing, just taking its sweet time.
It's why I leave Activity Monitor running when I use iWork applications.
This way, I know ifd the app is dead or if it's heavily busy.
Either that or it has nothing to do. It trims and reduces the resolution of bitmap images to 72dpi. There will be a fair bit of work if you have transparency in the document.
It doesn't do a very good job IMHO and to reduce the file by 90% is a big ask.
The 'Reduce FileSize' feature isn't linked to the 'export to PDF' feature.
As explained, before applying "Reduce file size" it's good practice to "Reduce Image File Size".
This will drop the parts of the pictures which aren't displayed.
The asked task doesn't imply a reduction of the pictures by 90%.
As I already wrote several times, it's more efficient to crop images to the really used area *_before inserting them in a Pages document_*.
A Pages document is huge by nature because the Index.xml file describing its contents is highly verbose.
If the document was saved with the 'embed Preview.pdf' feature active, the size of this PDF is adding a lot of used space.
I'd print to pdf and reduce the quality in Acrobat Pro.
Most of us don't own Acrobat Pro.
I feel that it would be a bit silly to buy an application whose price is : 450$ as a complement for a 80$ set of applications.
Before doing that, I would
(a) crop pictures before inserting them
(b) try to enhance Pages behaviour for free installing enhanced PDF filters.
Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 29 août 2010 09:53:44

Can using "Reduce File Size" in Acrobat Standard 9 effect DPI

I'm sure the answer is no to this question, but before I wholeheartedly recommend this fantastic tool for use throughout our firm, I need to know if there is the possibility of a PDF's functional DPI being reduced in a scanned PDF by using Reduce File Size. What I mean, I guess, by functional DPI, is the DPI in the PDF after running the tool. Courts require 300 dpi on scanned PDFs, which is our standard, but once in a PDF it's impossible to determine (as far as I can tell) DPI in a file. I notice no reduction in quality when using this tool, but want to make sure that we aren't circumventing court guidelines when using it to help reduce the size of files scanned at 300 dpi.

Hi Anoop,
I can share the graphic file, but not the pdf which contains it (as it contains confidential information) - thanks!

Running reduce file size results in excessive I/O

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