The Forge Archives

Well, I have finally finished the full KOTR version that I alluded to in the hoboes thread in Game design.  However, when I PDF the file, it comes in at a whopping 10MB for 82 pgs.  I have checked the art and it is not that large, and it is almost all grayscale.

I want to post this sucker on a site and offer it through PayPal, as well as a "lite" version for free.  The lite version clocks in at 992kb and 20 pgs, so I'm fine there.  I also plan to offer a hardcopy version through snail mail.

Any suggestions for cutting down file size on the full PDF?  I don't want to eliminate art because it's sooo dang purty, but the hobo way is to streamline.

Discuss...

I have no idea why your PDF would be so large without looking at the file itself. I have Acrobat on my computer right now - if you'd like, e-mail me at crnixon@anvilwerks.com, and I'll give you a way to get the file to me. I'd be more than happy to take a look at it and see what I can do to compress the file.

If you have Acrobat try to optimize the file when you save it.  Sometimes that will reduce the filesize.  

If that doesn't help you can check the settings on the software you used to create the PDF.  Acrobat distiller allows you to create PDFs at various resolutions.  My 300dpi version of Kayfabe comes in at just over 2mb for 32 pages with 15 pieces of art.  It goes down to about 500K if I have distiller compress the images to 72 dpi.  There really isn't much reason to do a 300dpi PDF if it's not intended for professional printing.  Unless your initial art was low res, 72 dpi should look fine when you print it.  Any degredation in image qulality is likely worth the saved download time.

,Matt G.

Well, I tried PDFing the file on another computer here at work, and voila!  The file size is now 1.1MB.

Matt, I think your suggestions were on the money, pity I didn't see them when I re-distilled the file.  I had you people thinking for nothing.

But it's nice to know that other computer monkeys on the Forge will help a stymied cohort.

Vive La Forge!!

Hey Aaron,

Well, I tried PDFing the file on another computer here at work, and voila! The file size is now 1.1MB.

I've noticed a similar situation at work creating .SEP postscript files from PageMaker. Different computers would create files of dramatically different size using the same processes. We're talking as much as a 500 kb vs. 9 mb difference for .SEP files created on different computers from the same PageMaker source files. I've never solved the situation to my satisfaction, but it always seemed related to font embedding. One coworker was able to control massive file sizes by switching a few dingbat characters in a document from one font to another, but then could not duplicate the solution when the situation came up subsequently. A fairly knowledgeable graphics guy once told me that there's a glitch in PageMaker that sometimes causes it to re-embed a font after each page break, rather than just once for a whole document, but I've been unable to confirm this, or find anyone with a solution.

Paul

Quote from: Paul CzegeA fairly knowledgeable graphics guy once told me that there's a glitch in PageMaker that sometimes causes it to re-embed a font after each page break, rather than just once for a whole document, but I've been unable to confirm this, or find anyone with a solution.

Paul,

If you want to find out whether or not PageMaker is doing this, look at the raw contents of the file in a simple text editor, or if you have a command line available, by using "more < myfile.pdf".  Each time a font is embedded you'll see this text:

/Type /FontDescriptor

This should work even with Macintosh files, provided you can find a text editor to open it, or you happen to be running OS X (which few designers are likely to be doing).  These are a little easier to find if you run the file through distiller without compression, but I found the font descriptors in Matt Snyder's Dust Devils PDF version, which was created on a Macintosh with QuarkExpress, and I'm reading it on a UNIX machine (a mix that sometimes causes problems).

Paul:
I've found that with Pagemaker, if you "place" some artwork and then delete it.  Then you "place" another piece and then delete it, Pagemaker keeps a footprint of that deleted image in the file.  This even happens if you choose to embed or link the file on import.  This causes the file size to balloon pretty large.

To solve this problem, I've resorted to creating a new document and copy/paste the elements into the new document.

I don't know if this will help anyone, but I feel it's worth knowing.