Reducing pdf size

[Tracy]

you might be at your limit

I did find an Adobe file reducer it's free

[DCurry]

Get rid of any profiles, metadata, alternate images. Make sure fonts are subset. If all else fails, go super-low on the image res (like 36 psi instead of 72.)

When they complain, and they will, tell them that's what it took to get to their desired size.

(I do disagree with Tracy's suggestion to make an X1A, place in Indy, then export to PDF. Only because there is no reason to do the first step of making the X1A because you can apply flattening when you export from Indy.) Also, in my experience flattening often makes the file bigger.

[Skryber]

I come across this problem all the time. My issue is they want to attach CLE Course materials in emails, not link. It's dumb bc they are provided a QR code to download the material during the course but then they want to follow up with it attached in an email after the course is over. If they wanted to keep it, they would have saved it. Or just use the QR code again.

[pspdfppdfxhd]

you might be at your limit

I did find an Adobe file reducer it's free

Yes, there's a limit to everything. Trying to convince them to back off on the transparency somehow does not go over well.
 
There's one page with 3 pictures on top of each other. 1. The face of person with a clipping path for text runaround 2. The shadow of the person's head 3. The person's head with a faded background. Yup, 3 high res. photos stacked on top of each other.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

[Tracy]

I know it's a lot of pages but you could export as .jpgs
if you have a workflow to combine it might work
ugh! 

I have no idea what size it will end up but who knows?
please sign my disclaimer!

[Joe]

you might be at your limit

I did find an Adobe file reducer it's free

Yes, there's a limit to everything. Trying to convince them to back off on the transparency somehow does not go over well.
 
There's one page with 3 pictures on top of each other. 1. The face of person with a clipping path for text runaround 2. The shadow of the person's head 3. The person's head with a faded background. Yup, 3 high res. photos stacked on top of each other.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Try running the Pitstop action for "remove irrelevant objects". It does wonders for PDF's where the designer likes to cover things up on a page with a white box instead of removing them.

[David]

If it were me, since this if for the web, I would rasterize any pages with transparency, downsample and make them rgb. Keep all fonts as live, not outlined (a lot of vector objects will make the file larger, it's all about the nodes).

Nobody will be able to tell the difference between the original hi-res and the rasterized version on the internet.


YMMV

[Joe]

Wait...so they are for displaying on the internet? Crap that is easy. Convert to 72 dpi jpegs compressed to hell and back. You can get them under a megabyte that way.

[pspdfppdfxhd]

Thanks, slight reduction but still overweight.

[born2print]

Too bad about the page count. Sometimes when I have a PDF that won't reduce enough, I screen-shot it then save as pdf. No one has ever called me on it yet 

[born2print]

Ooooh that gives me an idea, do you think you have just a few offending pages?
you could do a trick like that then combine them?

[DigiCorn]

Thanks, slight reduction but still overweight.

Let's keep it to prepress. My weight gain is due to a change in medication, thank you.

[Tracy]

hmm I wonder if the people demanding the small pdf can tell you how to do it? 

[born2print]

No.

[pspdfppdfxhd]

Ooooh that gives me an idea, do you think you have just a few offending pages?
you could do a trick like that then combine them?

I exported the 110 page pdf as single pages to see if any single pages stood out as overweight. Not really, at least half of them seem larger than you might think they should be.

I give up. I gave it my semi autistic best prepress shot but f**k it now!