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carolinalbd549
carolinalbd549
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Can someone tell me what to use if you want to make PDFs smaller...

Mar 23, 2010 10:43 AM

In my office, there are a lot of times we need to make PDFs smaller, so that we can email them, but I don't know what we should use.  We can email up to 6 MB, but that takes quite a while, and a lot of our documents are much larger than that.

1369 Views   2 Replies   Latest reply: golf25radioman, Jan 12, 2012 2:31 PM
 
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  • James Wilson
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    1. James Wilson,
    Mar 23, 2010 12:01 PM   in reply to carolinalbd549
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    This question is probably better suited to the Acrobat Pro forums, but there are a number of different ways to get a smaller PDF - all of which depend heavily on the content of the file.

     

    Normally, using Save As... under the File menu will reduce the size of the file somewhat by cleaning up the structure of the file; there is also the Reduce File Size under the Document menu which reduces the file size according to the version of Acrobat you make the file compatible with; and then there is PDF Optimizer, where you can compress or downsample graphics, discard unused objects and generally clean up the file structure by removing outdated information.

     

    If Save As.. is a tiny rock pick, PDF Optimizer can be a sledge (depending on how it's configured).

     
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  • golf25radioman
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    2. golf25radioman,
    Jan 12, 2012 2:31 PM   in reply to carolinalbd549
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    As mentioned, possibly this should be in the Acrobat Pro forum.  Having said that, I just went through the same - trying to get a PDF small enough to load on my web site but still look okay.  I am on a Mac, so I'm not sure if all this translates into any other platform.  But, in the past, from InDesign, I would select Print then choose my Adobe Printer (added many Acrobat versions ago), and it would print a very small file to my desktop.  We're talking from a 25 MB file down to less than 1 MB.  But with Acrobat Pro X and Mac OS X Lion it wasn't working.  Long story short I exported my InDesign file as a Post Script file, opened it in Adobe Distiller, chose "smallest file" and I got a file less than 1 MB from a 25 MB file.  Loads fast, looks good online, and if someone wants a Hi Def file to print I still have the 25 MB file download link.

     

    Today there were updates to both Acrobat Pro X and Acrobat Reader, I have not checked to see if my old method (using the Adobe Printer from my print menu) will work.  But I do know now how to do it with Distiller.

     

    Hope that might help some.

     

    Tom

     
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