PDF files

[Olin 0]

I recently had to replace my computer and with it my TMG. I tried to print a family group sheet with photos on it as a PDF file, and could not email it because it was enormous. After installing TMG my Adobe Acrobat (full version) would not work, so I had to reinstall it. Now I can print to PDF files by two methods.

 

If I save my Family Group sheet by TMG's Amyuni PDF Converter, the file is 24,900 KB in size. If I save it by printing it to Adobe's Acrobat Distiller, the same file is 119 KB in size. Comparing the files, I see no significant difference, except that the Distiller file lists itself as optimized, where the Writer file is not. The TMG version is over 200 times larger.

 

Do I have something set up wrong in TMG, or does the PDF Converter suck?

 

Olin

[Jim Byram 0]

PDF printer drivers have a variety of settings that end up affecting the size of the PDF file produced (for example... how images are handled, whether fonts are embedded, etc.). You would need to configure each driver with comparable settings before you could make a valid comparison.

[John Moran 0]

I recently had to replace my computer and with it my TMG.  I tried to print a family group sheet with photos on it as a PDF file, and could not email it because it was enormous.  After installing TMG my Adobe Acrobat (full version) would not work, so I had to reinstall it.  Now I can print to PDF files by two methods.

 

If I save my Family Group sheet by TMG's Amyuni PDF Converter, the file is 24,900 KB in size.  If I save it by printing it to Adobe's Acrobat Distiller, the same file is 119 KB in size.  Comparing the files, I see no significant difference, except that the Distiller file lists itself as optimized, where the Writer file is not.  The TMG version is over 200 times larger.

 

Do I have something set up wrong in TMG, or does the PDF Converter suck?

 

Olin

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You may have a later version, but according to the Adobe Acrobat 4 User Guide, there are several variations of "Optimize". This may be the one you selected:

 

"Optimize PDF. Select this setting to reduce the PDF file size by removing repeated background text, line art,

and images and replacing them with pointers to the first occurrences of those objects."

 

In addition, images may be saved at "screen resolution" - assuming you have an old small screen Apple Mac - "of 72 dpi" in the Adobe Acrobat application and 300 or 600 dpi in Amyuni.

 

The last time I tried to make heads or tails out of the Ghostscript site, it seemed that the preferred lossless compression method was png, although that does not mean that Amyuni uses png.

 

It also seemed, on the Ghostscript site, that there were some unhappy campers among "open source" developers involved in that enterprise and that there was a little bet of regression in the Pdf versions now offered, as certain features were retracted and made proprietary. I think it had to do mostly with an editing module, but not sure without rechecking.

John M.