Good lord it's huge! PDF file sizing

[madelf]

I just looked at the file size of the PDF I created for the playtest edition of my game and nearly fell out of my chair. Even with the images downsampled to 96 dpi, the file size is 27meg.

That just can't be right.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

I've used both the native PDF creator from Serif PagePlus9 and also tried PDF995 with approximately the same results.

 

[jmucchiello]

How many pages is it?

Do you have a background image on each page? Perhaps your source software is repeating that image on each page of the PDF instead of including it only once.

 

[tensen]

This is where distiller comes into play. I found this out on the first product that I did. Make sure any program you are using has the optimize option turned on. Cut my 27MB PDF to about 5MB. Many applications just allow all the varied bloat in.

 

[Flyspeck23]

Don't know about Serif PagePlus9, but PDF995 didn't work out for me too.

Acrobat is a good investment. If you can't afford it, try eBay or similar - even an older version (4 or 5) would help.

 

[madelf]

How many pages is it?

Do you have a background image on each page? Perhaps your source software is repeating that image on each page of the PDF instead of including it only once.

It's 100 pages 8-1/2x11

I don't have a full background image on each page, but I do have a small top and bottom graphic that repeats throughout (it's set to the master page though, so it should only be loading it once)


I had hoped to avoid buying Acrobat, but maybe I'll have to break down and do it. I know people will get sick of downloading files this size real quick.

 

[madelf]

Okay, did some experimenting.

It seems to be something in the graphics.
I suppressed all the images and the resulting PDF came out at 610k.

So apparently is isn't reducing the images properly.

 

[Blacksad]

As I see many authors strugling to get software license I think that I should mention a few things which might interest independant publisher.

There is an open source (i.e. free) software of quality for desk-top publishing:

Scribus
http://www.scribus.net/

and a small presentation of it:
http://ahnews.music.salford.ac.uk/s...ad&name=Downloads&file=index&req=getit&lid=19

You can do nice PDF with it (you can even include those little javascript code that only Adobe Acrobat Reader can read).

It works on a Linux (and *nix like) OS, requires Qt (and KDE if you want the drag and drop function).

If you have a monster computer you might be able to run it on windows XP with cygwin.

P.S. there is also OpenOffice.org for those who can't afford the WindowsOffice solution. This one has a windows version.
It can import basic WindowsOffice files and the 1.1 release include a nice PDF export feature, which might be all you need.

P.P.S It might be interesting to include the different software usable for PDF publisher in the FAQ, with cost and comments from users.

edit: OpenOffice.org isn't only for those who can't afford WindowsOffice, its quality is on par with Microsoft software. Though familiarity, and formation cost are a huge restraint to change in desktop envronment. I can't comment on the quality of Scribus compared to Adobe software or QuarkXpress

 

[Fast Learner]

I don't have a full background image on each page, but I do have a small top and bottom graphic that repeats throughout (it's set to the master page though, so it should only be loading it once)

While your page layout software is smart enough to know that it only needs one copy of the image, your PDF creation software isn't that smart. Even if you have good compression turned on it will still likely include copies of those graphics for every page. Acrobat Distiller settings (or just saving the document out of full Acrobat) tell it to only refer to one copy, so without Acrobat you're probably out of luck.

 

[madelf]

While your page layout software is smart enough to know that it only needs one copy of the image, your PDF creation software isn't that smart. Even if you have good compression turned on it will still likely include copies of those graphics for every page. Acrobat Distiller settings (or just saving the document out of full Acrobat) tell it to only refer to one copy, so without Acrobat you're probably out of luck.

It out to be smart enough, being the same program.

Though even if it's not, the repeating graphic was created within the layout program and was still there even with all images suppressed at the 610k PDF file size. So I don't think that's what is causing the problem.

I suspect what it isn't doing is downsampling the images enough. I'll probably have to make a separate layout using lower res images for exporting a web-ready PDF and one with higher res images for the print-ready PDF. Kind of a pain, but probably worth my $260 for the time being.

 

[Fast Learner]

It out to be smart enough, being the same program.

The rest of your post not withstanding, most apps -- including InDesign, where it's built-in and is from the same company as Acrobat -- seem to mostly treat PDF creation like a printer, generating one page at a time and being totally mindless of that kind of logic.