Graphics, Figures & Tablessize of pdf-figures

Information and discussion about graphics, figures & tables in LaTeX documents.
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silentboom
Posts: 11
Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2009 11:02 am

size of pdf-figures

Post by silentboom »

Hello.

A while ago I have created some graphics and saved them as pdf-files.
Now I want to \includegraphics{} them in my document.
The Problem:
The 40 graphics are quite large (about 1mb per file).
In the document I scale them to about 10%.
How can I achieve that the size of the pdf then created with pdflatex isn't 40mb.
By the way. I created the graphics with inkscape and havn't got any source files of them.

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frabjous
Posts: 2064
Joined: Fri Mar 06, 2009 12:20 am

Re: size of pdf-figures

Post by frabjous »

Depending on how they were created, that's not the way PDF graphics "work" -- making them smaller will not decrease the file size, since they're not rasterized, but a set of instructions for what to draw. Those instructions take up the same amount of space regardless of what scale is used. (The advantage of this is that someone should be able to zoom in on parts of your PDF without it becoming pixelated... this is why people might prefer them in this format.)

If you want a smaller file, my advice would be to convert the PDF images to some other image format, and then scale the actual files, before using \includegraphics -- e.g., to JPG or PNG or something else where they'll be smaller in size if the images are smaller. If you let us know your operating system, we might be able to suggest software to do this if you don't have it already.

But someone else might have other ideas, particularly if you let us know a bit more about what your goals are with them (e.g., do you want them to be infinitely scaleable?)
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