I downloaded an Office Action via TDR earlier today, saved it to my server, and went to email it to a client. Only then did I realize the Action (60 pages long with 55+ pages of color website printouts) was 22MB in size. Ouch.
In that many email servers bounce any attachments bigger than 5MB, I needed to figure out how to convert the file to grayscale. Luckily, I found instructions (see: Tips & Techniques: Convert a color PDF to grayscale in Acrobat 9).
In a nutshell,
- Open the PDF in Acrobat 9 Pro.
- Select “Advanced,” then “Print Production,” then “Preflight.”
- Select the “PDF fixups dropdown.”
- Select “Convert to grayscale,” then the “Analyze and fix” button.
Voila!
Ok…so it didn’t totally fix my issue this time, it only dropped the file size from 22MB to 11MB…but it is a start. I’m sure I’ll figure out a few more tricks as I experiment over time…and I’ll try to share what I find in future posts.
Related posts:
This is a problem. In Acrobat 8 (I have not yet upgraded to 9) there is an option in the Document menu to reduce file size. But I have not found that it does very much. Also, zipping a pdf does not reduce file size much either.
Sometimes, printing the PDF using CutePDF (which creates another PDF) can substantially reduce file size.
I know, that sounds weird, but it works. Apparently, if the original file saved graphics in a large format, they’re reduced to just what’s needed by CutePDF when it creates its own PDF printout. This is even more true when you have inexplicably large Word documents containing graphics.
Although it’s from an Apple forum, this post also includes some adjustments in Acrobat itself to reduce pdf size. May be worth a look.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6109398#6109398