Acrobat Professional Help Required - Reducing PDF file size.

[g_newton@adobeforums.com]

I have a large artwork file set up as press quality. It is currently 15MB.

I can open it in Acrobat Pro and have two options to reduce the file size -

1 - Use Optimiser (where I can put the settings to press quality which is what I need) which doesn;t really do much to the file size obviously

2 - I can use the option 'reduce file size' which I think can remove compatability with earlier versions of Acrobat, but I don't know if it actually degrades the quality of the image.
(when I use this option, it halves the file size to 8MB)

Basically I need to know if by using the reduce file size option I will lose quality of print or if it just strips out un-needed compatibility and fonts

(the artwork will be opened and viewed from Illustrator, so Acrobat compatability is not an issue...)

I need to email the artwork hence the need to reduce file size...
Cheers
Gaz

[de_Siem@adobeforums.com]

1 and 2 are in fact the same process. Reduce file sie uses the standard preset of the pdf optimizer.

Whether or not you lose quality or not is for you to decide.
take in account what you need the PDF file for. If it's purely for print/press reasons the file size should be no issue. If it's for online/preview reaons, lower the quality until you get the balace you like between file size and quality.

[g_newton@adobeforums.com]

Hi de Siem

Is the 'reduce file size' configurable?

I set the optimiser to bicubic downsampling to 300 for anything over 450
and set Acrobat compatabilty to Acrobat 5 and the result is a same sized file.

When I use 'reduce file size' it produces a 8MB file.

Have I lost quality?

Cheers

[g_newton@adobeforums.com]

it is for print, and I have to email it (with a 10MB email limit)
(my supplier in China finds downloads from Ftp or filesharing stupidly slow)

[g_newton@adobeforums.com]

I just phoned Adobe support and they told me the image quality is not affected when using 'reduce image size' - it just strips out unwanted compatability and uses compression...

Still not convinced seeing as there are a number of opinions floating around

[de_Siem@adobeforums.com]

reduce file size is not configurable as a preset.
You make your own using the pdf optimizer. read the manual on he pdf optimizer if you not familiar with it.

You can always check a file using the preflight option. Use the check images preset which you can use to check the resolution of images inside a pdf.

[pjonesCET@adobeforums.com]

With Pdf Optimizer you reduce file size sever different ways.

You remove content that allow PDF's to viewed on previous versions.

You reduce the size of Images by changing the DPI of the images

And if you document has whole lot of text, you can check if you have multiple copies embedded fonts.

I've seen some documents I've created, that had up to 20 copies of the same font/font style.

I my case this caused by the system having fonts, main Library having Fonts, the User Library having Fonts, Acrobat having Fonts, MS office having Fonts, And I still have an OS9 partition That has fonts. And Acrobat doesn't know which fonts to truly use so it embedded copies from each source. This is Not necessarily a Mac Design Flaw so much its the way the underlying Unix is setup. uses fonts from any source you can find. And if they have the same name and and fond name that doesn't make a difference