Large pdf from 2 page document

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dwc

Hi

I'm having trouble with a 2 page document that exports as a 22Mb pdf. I've compressed the pics, and tried various options on font embedding, but it seems to make little difference to the pdf size. I've got compression set to medium on the pdf set up page. Scribus 1.4.6 on Mac.

Are there some settings I should be trying?

GarryP

#1
Welcome to the forum dwc.

What was the PDF size when you didn't use compression? Sometimes a "compressed" PDF can be larger than an uncompressed one with the same contents.
I've just done a quick test on a simple 8-page document and I got the following results (all with no maximum resolution set):
* No compression - 4.34MB
* Automatic / Maximum Quality compression - 2.16MB
* Lossy / Minimum Quality - 835KB
* Lossless / Maximum Quality - 7.52MB
As you can see, maximum quality with a lossless compression method made the document nearly twice as large as having no compression at all.
The compression performance very much depends on the images you're using and to optimise it you would have to go through a long manual process. Best to just do a few tests - like I did above - and choose which one you like best for whatever purposes you need it for.

Also, what have you selected in the Colour tab of the Export dialog for "Output Intended for"? Output for a Printer is usually about three times the size of output for Screen/Web.

Embedding/outlining fonts on a two-page document shouldn't make a massive difference to PDF size but it really depends on how much text you're using of each font and how big the font files are and how complex the glyphs are. The process to optimise this manually would be long and boring. Best to try embedding all you can and then outlining all you can and choosing the best output from the two.

dwc

Set compression quality to Auto/minimum. PDF is still 22Mb, and it's set for screen/web. Only using one font, with variations (light, bold) which come as a single font package. Changing embedding to outlining seems to have no effect on the size.

I did a test document with all the font variants in, and that comes out nice and small, so I suspect the images. After pre-compression, largest image is 370kb. So, a bit bewildered.

utnik

hi dwc

if you show me your files ('collect for output' with images and fonts and a .pdf file), i will take a look at it. (without any guarantee to solve the puzzle...)

utnik

dwc


utnik

hi dwc

i just took a look at your files:

       
  • the images build 99.11% of the .pdf file size
  • your source images are .jpeg compressed, which makes them much smaller than the embedded .tiff variants (i extracted one of them – it weighs 3.5MB instead of the  160KB of the .jpeg original file...)
  • when i exported a .pdf file with .jpeg compression and maximal quality, the file became 3.8MB (with image resolutions up to 590ppi...)
  • by reducing the image resolution to 300ppi, the file size decreased to 2.1MB.
maybe this clarifies something...

utnik

dwc

That's the one. Thank you for that.

With JPEG compression, medium quality & Max Image Resolution set to 300dpi, I get a 1M file, which is much more sensible.

Thank you again.

Nermander

Quote from: dwc on December 19, 2017, 05:27:20 PM
and it's set for screen/web.

That setting only means the PDF uses RGB colorspace, it does not in any way at all (as far as I know) affect resolution, image compression etc.