pdf export - File enormous - Size reduction needed

[Ian B]

Hi,
I'm repeating a posting because my original request seems to have disappeared.
When producing a monthly club magazine with Publisher 2010 I exported it as pdf files and the file-size was typically 3-4Mb. This month I have used Xara Designer Pro 6 for the entire publication and printed copies are excellent. However, most of the magazines are sent by e-mail and the exported pdf file from Xara is 14Mb which is too large to e-mail (so I'm told). Am I missing a trick here? I've chosen the lowest resolution options and optimised images. Why is the Xara produced file so large? Can I reduce it significantly?

[Albacore]

There are so many things it could be! Have a look at what you import large files at in the Page Options under View. You can have two PDF files if you want one for viewing and one for printing. The way I do all my newsletters and yes I have to e,ail most of mine to be printed is to use the advanced options when exporting to PDF. Select Custom then hit the Advanced Options button - In the General Tab you could select "Optimised for Fast Web Viewing". The other way if you are using the file for printing and not for viewing is to go into the Object Tab and select the options you want there - I tend to select tend to leave the JPEG at native and work on the Rasterization settings and limit to 150 dpi you don't need it any higher than this unless you want magazine quality. Have a shot at these settings see if your file size comes down especially the way you import your bitmaps again 150 dpi is all you need. If you have any other queries or can't get your file size down come back to the thread and I will try and help some more. By the way your file size in PDF will be about a third more than it is when you compare it to your Xara file.

[Ian B]

Thanks for the help but so far the file size has not reduced significantly. When Optimizing All Photos some (not jpegs) were left unaltered. How can I find which photos in my document are using the most memory?

[gwpriester]

Use on of the two options highlighted for e-mail distribution. Xara will automatically optimize the images.

[Ian B]

Even when I do that I still have a large file. The Xar file I started with before optimising is 23M while the bitmap size is 11M. Optimising is not going to reduce the bitmaps enough. Considering the document is mainly text what makes up the 12M of data?

[Ian B]

The problem has been solved by removing all effects, even though there were very few. By trying to export the pages in small batches it became obvious which pages had greater than expected memory requirements. I removed the pictures from these pages but this had little effect, so I then removed the effects. Amazing!

[Albacore]

When you apply an effect to an area instead of vectors being exported the whole area where the effect has been applied is rendered as a bitmap. Same goes for transparencies and shadows these are both rendered as a bitmap. I try to keep my newsletters simple and straight forward as they don't need huge transparencies as a background to text. Another tip is to always have your text on a different layer if you can even if you want the text to repel away from a bitmap as you can always place a shape with no fill or stroke colour on the text layer as it produces cleaner text when printed.

[gwpriester]

You can also do what is referred to in Adobe as flatten the image. In essence, just make a bitmap of the image. Then the image exports as a plain image.

You might also make two copies of your document. One for printing and one for e-mail distribution.