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Software to compress large pdf files

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Darwin:
Well... Ovis PDF-DocPro does as it advertises (albeit with perhaps less user control over the process than I'd like). I used Clickbook PDF Printer to generate a 25 MB pdf from a ppt file that was 9.5 MB in size (graphics were converted to jpg but not optimized for web view) and then ran it through PDF-DocPro and it generated a file that is 3 MB in size. That's knocking on the developer's claim of 90% compression. The nice thing is that the result features nice, sharp graphics, unlike the file that I produced using PdfCompressor 3.1 (the pixelation rendered any text in the graphics unreadable). I am satisfied and rethinking how I generate pdf's for e-mail!

PS urlwolf - I didn't figure out how to generate a pdf from the flash file that I generated, but thanks for the suggestion anyway. The fact that a 10 MB ppt file can be converted to a 2 MB Flash file with almost no loss of quality in the graphics is IMPRESSIVE!

PPS Sorry I hijacked the thread...  :-[

jdd:
I am glad to see that my initial inquiry has generated some good discussion but it has confused the heck out of me.  I have a significant quantity of large pdf's that I keep as permanent reference on my laptop that are indexed and searchable.  Since I spend a great deal of time on the road, I am highly sensitive to bloating the hard drive.

Many of the pdf's I keep on disk have been sent to me (created by other people) or downloaded from the net so I have little control over the fact that someone else was inefficient in creating the original PDF.

What I find so distressing is that my software tests gave exactly the opposite result that Darwin found.  In other words, my limited testing indicated that PdfCompressor 3.1 kicked butt, while PDF-DocPro was completely ineffective.  I will do some additional testing and report back.

On a related note, while I was searching for a program to compress large PowerPoint files, I came across another (more affordable) gem called NXPowerLite http://www.nxpowerlite.com/index.php?ld=n.  This program will dramatically shrink PowerPoint as well as Word documents.  What appeals to me most is that it retains the native file format (e.g. .ppt, .doc., .xls) so the file can be edited at a later date.

Darwin:
Hi jdd,

I'll have to try using PDF-DocPro to compress some pdfs that I didn't generate in the first place (though I know that the results will be mixed). nxpowerlite is an interesting find - one of the avenues that I explored in trying to reduce the size of the pdfs I generated from powerpoint files was to compress the ppt before converting to pdf. Nothing I tried worked that well, other than the script that patteo pointed out. Will have to give this a go.

Regarding PDF Compressor 3.1 - I was impressed by this app. As noted above, a file that was generated from a ppt file with compressed graphics using medium compression in the pdf creation process was compressed less than 2% by PDF-DocPro but about 45% by PDF Compressor. It works, and it works well, it's just that my needs are different - I'm trying to create small pdfs to distribute by e-mail and am less worried about compressing those that I have gotten from other people.

skrommel:
 :) Use IrfanView with the Postscript and ImPDF plugins from http://www.irfanview.com to decrease the colors, reduce the quality, or whatever you have to do to shrink those PDF files.

And it's free!

I use this command line to make black and white PDFs:

--- ---i_view32.exe "in.pdf" /bpp=1 /convert="out.pdf"
Skrommel

garek007:
Does anyone know how I can change the quality of the script?  The script compresses the files just a little too much for my bosses, so I wanted to edit the code to change the quality to be slightly better.  Can someone tell me how to do it?

Thanks in advance.

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