Smaller file size

[Lou Wrench]

How do I get a file to be smaller? When I convert a 32 page InDesign document with fairly big, hi res (15Mb to 35Mb) eps files in RGB and CMYK, to a PDF, that is to be viewed on a website. I wonder if it can be done in a single stage or must one go through PDF optimiser? If so how do you reduce the Document overhead and pic files without too many jpeg artifacts or pixelation?
Lou

[GuyB]

Hi Lou,

For a web use, most of the time the "screen" PDF preset of InDesign works well for me.

[Lou Wrench]

Hi Guy
I don't seem to have a "screen" preset, is this one of your own presets?
Lou

[GuyB]

I have InDesign CS and it is a "default" preset, it's not one of mine. Here are the presets I have (if you have another version of ID, maybe that they changed the names ?) :

ebook
screen
print
press
PDF/x-1a
PDF/x-3
Acrobat 6 Layered

If you don't have the screen preset, tell me and I'll give you the details.

[Lukas Engqvist]

The "PDF Optimiser…" under advanced is well worth wile to learn if you need smaller files. There is an asset inspector so you can see how the file size is split between fonts images etc. This is a good way to find out why the file ends up bigger than expected.

Note that if you have a standard font in several placed images and each image is a placed pdf with a subsetted font it could be that acrobat is "forced" to save several instances of the font. Also standard fonts can usually be omitted (Helvetica, Arial, Times, etc)

Lukas

[eugenetyson]

I wouldn't recommend unembedding fonts, unless you're going to supply them to the printers in a separate file.

[Lukas Engqvist]

There are 35 fonts as the pasic Postscript pack…they are safe to unembed.
But as I tried to say sometimes NOT subsetting can give you smaller fonts as repeated use of the same font can be consolidated saving valuable memory.
Also remember there are some fonts in Acrobat that are allways there.

Lukas

[eugenetyson]

Yes but some places use different platforms. Different versions of Acrobat, different RIPS that handle things differently. The RIP won't know that Acrobat has these fonts, it will just say, "MISSING FONTS". Fonts are not that big anyway and take up minimal size in your PDF.

There's an interesting topic happening here:

http://indesignsecrets.com/creating-smaller-pdfs-from-a-vector-dense-book.php