Hello! I have a rather large document (ahem) that is just too large to send in one big chunk to my advisor during the revision phase. Does anyone know of a PDF compressor (freeware) that I might be able to use to get this thing down to a decent size? It doesn't matter if it loses resolution in the graphics -- this is just for revision, not press copy. Thanks in advance.
Quinn, Adobe Acrobat Professional 6.0 has a useful feature under the 'File' menu called 'Reduce File Size'. I got a 180MB file down to 7MB using this. I have also found that doing a 'Save As' and not actually making any changes reduces PDF file sizes with the later version. Something to do with defragmentation, Gregg will probably know. Winzip won't compress a PDF file. All the best, Dave C.
Learn something new, even not education related, everyday on these forums. The inclusion or exclusion of the fonts used in the PDF document may be partially responsible for the size of the file as well.
never used it, but this is what I found with a quick google search: http://www.winload.de/download/43181/Office,Business/PDF-Tools/Free.PDF.Compressor-1.12.html http://www.freewarepage.de/download/5391.shtml I'm not sure if the links (downloads) work... that's why I posted both of them. Brandon
In my years of experience, I've learned not to assume -- even if it turns out, in this case, that I could have -- the kind of thing that some here have assumed. So I'll ask: Quinn, are you saying that you have a PDF file that's just too large; and so you're looking for a way to shrink it using some kind of freewasre PDF (or, really, any type of) file compressor software (such as WinZIP, for example)... as most here have interpreted you to mean? Or are you saying that you have a document (like a Word or WordPerfect document, for example) that's too big; and so you're thinking that if you converted it into a PDF file, it would get smaller; and so you're looking for a freeware word-processor-to-PDF file converter of some kind? Sorry for the hair-splitting, but I'm just trying to drill down to the real need before venturing a solution.
Probably better to print and mail it. If your adviser is going to edit it, they will probably enjoy reading a printed copy rather than staring at a screen. Also makes it easier to mark up with a pen. I'm curious how to compress a PDF though.
Re: Re: Query: PDF Compressor (freeware) I have a 5 meg Word 2000 document that, even when zipped, is too large to email in one chunk. PDF'ing it gets it smaller, but the PDF zipped is even larger than the word document zipped. The PDF includes fonts because the document has certain math fonts in it that it cannot do without. So far I've found that if I use PDFWriter, rather than Distiller, it's much smaller -- but still a wee bit too large, and I believe it doesn't include the special fonts. So, I would like to be able to get the smallest possible PDF file without losing the special math fonts, but it is OK if the graphs, et cetera, are fuzzy, since the graph labels are done via font.
Re: Re: Query: PDF Compressor (freeware) Normally, I'd agree, but my advisor's itinerary has him jumping from country to country for talks, conferences, lectures, and so on (something like 7 cities in the last month and a half or so), such that email is pretty much the best route for the revision phase. DL -- it's about the motion.
Re: Re: Re: Query: PDF Compressor (freeware) Have you thought about first getting the PDF as small as can be (which we'll talk about shortly), and then uploading it to your web site and emailing him the link (with a warning that it's huge and, so, if he's not using some kind of broadband connection, it will take several minutes to fully download to his browser (or to his hard drive, if he simply right-clicks on the link and does a "Save target as..." instead)? Remember that you don't have to put the link, or link to the PDF file, on any of your site's web pages. It can be a "blind" link where no one can find the file anywhere on your site unless they actually have said link. Just a thought. That makes some sense. PDF files are vectored, so they're already pretty much as tight as they're gonna' get. ZIPping can reduce a little, depending on your WinZIP settings, but by and large PDF files can't be reduced much by ZIPping. It sounds like your graphic files (which is, what... your graphs, right?) are large, no? Are you sure they're in both a format that makes them as small as possible, and then are also optimized to be so? I mean... yes, you can control the graphics resolution in the PDFWriter; and selecting a lower resolution makes the graphics smaller and, therefire, the PDF file smaller. But if you start out with graphics in your Word document that are as optimized as they can be, it can help tremendously. But you can specify that only the math fonts get embedded. As long as the text is Arial, Times New Roman, or Courier, then only the math font need be embedded. Reducing all font embedding to only that which is absolutely necessary goes a long way. Yes, exactly. I'm glad you discovered that. I was going to suggest it. But you can expand on it... keep reading. Not true. You can control font embedding and graphic resolution with the PDFWriter, too. Just select "Print" from the "File" menu (rather than from a printer icon button so that the "Print" dialog will pop-up; then select the PDFWriter as the printer; then click on the "Properties" button. The dialog that pops-up should allow you to control font embedding, graphic resolution, etc. Set the resolution low, and embed only the math font. Removing color from graphics helps, too. Set as I just said, above; then, print to the PDFWriter, as you just said you've been doing; then, open "Acrobat Exchange" and pull the new PDF file into it; then, use the "Reduce File Size" thingy that Dave C talked about; then, "Save as..." the file to a completely new filename. That should give you about as small a PDF file as you're proabably gonna' get. Some versions of Exchange will let you print a PDF file from within Exchange to the PDFWriter... ...in other words, you first print the file from Word to the PDFWriter, then pull it into Exchange, and use the "Reduce File Size" thing; then print it yet again from Exchange to the PDFWriter giving it an entirely new name. Sometimes if you do that -- if your version of Exchange will let you -- you can compare the PDF file simply "reduced" and then "saved as" against the one "reduced" and then re-printed to the PDFWriter yet again, and the latter will be even smaller than the former. Or not. Just depends. Your mileage may vary. Here's a web site that I believe will help you: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/pdf/ Good luck!
Re: Re: Re: Re: Query: PDF Compressor (freeware) OK, with some tweaking of PDFWriter's settings (graphics compressed as ZIP rather than JPEG), I was able to get the PDF down to one third its original size, making it emailable without having to split it into three. The graphs are still interpretable, too, which is kind of important since they're the primary means of determining one of the main contentions of the thesis. Thanks!
