help pdf

[Yummi]

I don't know if I can ask such things, if not please tell me and I'll remove.

I received some pdf files, very huge (5 - 9 Mb) and I want to reduce their size but I cannot reach an acceptable size for some of them. Some files which contain images can be reduced up to 70 Ko but some which contain only texts cannot be less than 1 Mb. I want to make them downloadable on my website but they are too huge.

Thanks !

 

[Heathen Dawn]

PDF has a few mechanisms for reducing file size:

• Flate compression
• Tag compression
• Font subsetting
• Fast Web view

They’re all available on Acrobat, and at least one is available on other PDF makers (I use AFPL Ghostscript, and it has flate compression and font subsetting, but not the other two).

Flate compression: compresses the text and the fonts. A must-have.

Tag compression: available only in PDF 1.5 (Acrobat 6). If you use tagged PDF, tag compression cuts down the size substantially.

Font subsetting: embed only those characters of the font that are used in the document. Could be immensely space-saving if you have a lot of fonts.

Fast Web view: compaction for the purpose of previewing the PDF file in a browser.

In short, check the settings of your PDF creation software. Another tip: if your document uses the Base14 fonts (Times, Helvetica, Courier, ZapfDingbats or Symbol) then you can save space by not embedding them in the file, because those fonts are guaranteed to exist where a PDF viewer is installed.