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Too-large press ready file size?

Forum Index > Printing & Prepress > Too-large press ready file size?
2009-08-21 11:17:38
mhendrix
Registered: Aug 21 2009
Posts: 2
Answered

I am new to Acrobat. I have a trial version of 9 Pro, and the answer to this question will determine whether my company buys it or not.

We need to generate clean, sharp, professional PDFs from our PowerPoint presentations, not just for printing, but also for sharing with clients. Using the "press ready" option in Print Properties generated a high quality PDF, but the file size is huge - 19MB. This is too cumbersome to send via email.

However, using the "standard" or "smallest file size" option left us with some problems, like visible hairlines. We would not want to send this to a client.

How do I generate a clean, high resolution PDF that is also a reasonable size?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro 9.0, Windows
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2009-08-22 00:40:20
#1
UVSAR
Expert
Registered: Oct 29 2008
Posts: 1357
It depends on what your document contains as to how big it'll get - PPT slides with background images or photos will be sent to "press ready" at full 300ppi resolution, and a 10x8" bitmap like that is not going to be small.

Without seeing the file we can't of course suggest specific things to change, but if you open the PDF in your trial of Acrobat Pro and choose menu..Advanced..PDF optimizer, in the top right of the popup is a button called "audit space usage" - press that and it'll show you where in the PDF all the big stuff is lurking. You can then use the settings on the optimizer panel to reduce the problem areas.


In terms of efficiency, it's important to think of the design for the original document with PDF in mind - vector artwork (gradients, fills, etc.) take up hardly any space at all in a PDF as they're stored in code, so rather than using a big background bitmap like you'd do for a web page, always try to do as much as you can with vector drawing tools. Also watch for things like hidden objects (where most of an image is behind something else) - they'll also be in the PDF unless you use an early version of PDF in the export options (PDF/1.4 or lower) that flattens layering, but if you crop them out of the PPT file, they won't be sent to Acrobat at all.

Also think of the destination intent - if the PDF has to look awesome on screen but isn't being printed, then you can edit the resampling settings within the Press Ready print preset so they still use high quality, but store the bitmaps in 72ppi or 96ppi instead of 300.
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