General ⇒ Large output file - PDF

[alexz]

Gurus,

Not sure there is any magic but I am writing a large doc with a number of pdf figures so the output pdf doc is about 10mb. Any ideas how to make this more manageable? I can go smaller lower res on the figures, how about the externaldocument package to possibly hold all the figures in the Appendix and cross reference?

TIA
Alex

[localghost]

[...] Not sure there is any magic but I am writing a large doc with a number of pdf figures so the output pdf doc is about 10mb. [...]

Tell us something more about the origin of the files. If they have been converted from other formats (JPG, PNG), you should better use these originals. It makes no sense to convert a pixel based format (JPG, PNG) to a vector based format (PDF) because the resulting output will be blown up. Specific advice can only be given after having some details.


Best regards and welcome to the board
Thorsten¹

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Alex,

welcome to the board!
Perhaps use the draft option for graphicx during development:

Code: Select all

\usepackage[draft]{graphicx}

With draft there will be just place holders instead of the figures an the resulting pdf will be smaller. For the final document you can remove the draft option or use final instead.

Stefan

[alexz]

Thanks guys, i'm using draft when in draft. The issue is the document distribution to vendors and other business partners. They don't have latex, just want to read pdfs.

THe graphic origin is visio. They are IT pictures that i "save as" png format. PNG seems to be better than jpg at the same resolution.

Then finally the output from latex is pdf. I've reduced the resolution of the graphics to 200 dpi, the doc is smaller and resolution is barely acceptable.

[localghost]

I seems that Visio can export (via "Save as" dialogue) the diagrams to EPS (Encapsulated Postscript). So you should use this feature to get vector based images. You can convert these files with epstopdf or "on the fly" with the epstopdf package (needs enabling --shell-escape for the compiler). This would have the advantage of better quality for the graphics and less size of the resulting PDF document.

[alexz]

humm, my version of visio (2003) does not have eps as a file type, I've used it before and liked eps. Of the formats I recognize I see, jpg, gif, png.

[bramp]

How big are all the PNG files? If it is only 1MB then I don't think that would be causing a 10MB file.

But anyway, I am using Visio for my figures. However, I am either using Adobe Acrobat to save my Visio diagrams as PDFs, or using Visio 2007 which has a export to PDF feature.

Perhaps look at CutePDF it should be able to add PDF export to visio, with minimal of hassle and it is free! This will now mean your PDF will contain vector graphics rather than bitmap... which is always a bonus...

Hope this helps