I have a Word document that has nine photos, all of which I have saved to the minimum size I can as jpg files. The Word document is not tiny - something like 5.6mb - but it’s not insane, just big.
When I go to convert to pdf, however, the file becomes a whopping 58mb. This happens whether I use “save as” in Word, or go to Print and use the “print pdf” function.
Help! I need to create a rational-size pdf file, but don’t know how. Any advice will be much appreciated, thank you in advance.
Do you have Distiller? That will allow you to down-sample the images, which are probably being saved at full resolution.
My thought was to wonder if the fonts are being embedded.
Yup. It sounds like the images aren’t being compressed so the files is probably being saved at a really high resolution for fancy print output. If the Distiller setting are set for a web-optimized PDF the file size should be pretty small. We use immense graphics and never crack 500 KB.
Hmm, I never have this problem really. I just save to PDF in my word processor.
Keep in mind that Word generally stores only preview-quality pictures in its .doc file, and is counting on the files on your hard drive to get decent print quality. When it prints to PDF, all that extra data gets brought in and you wind up with a large file.
I’m assuming you’re not using Acrobat and don’t have Distiller as an option (since Save to PDF is built into Mac OS X).
My recommendation is to take the large PDF file and open it in Preview. Choose Save As… from the File menu. In the Save As dialogue box, there are two drop-down menus that control the output. The first “Format:” should already show PDF. The second “Quartz Filter:” probably shows None. Choose the Quartz Filter for “Reduce File Size” and see if that helps anything.
Try using OpenOffice.org, which may use a better PostScript distiller than whatever comes with Microsoft Word.
dracoi’s suggestion in post #6 worked like a charm. Thanks so much, and thanks to you all for your insights.
What Dracoi said with Preview-- I use it to get PPT->PDF down from, oh, 108 MB to 5 or so. Has improved my life.