How to create small PDF files?

[j077y_r0g3r]

question.

Once mounted my files in acrobat, I want the pages to look A4 pages, so with acrobat 8 I was used to reprint in pdf with all compression options deactivated. Now with acrobat 9 it doesn't work this way...didnt found a way yet...

[carmar1791]

It's the same . Pay attention when you repprint : you must select A4 paper , but "fit to page" or "reduce to page size" too , (and not : "none" or "nothimg")

[j077y_r0g3r]

there must be some DAMN option that I let cecked...I will look better.

[waytovietnam]

Get this program its free and legal

http://www.primopdf.com/

It installs a virtual printer. You'll read all about it at the website. When you have your document ready (in ANY windows program) just print to this virtual printer, you get a choice, "print" quality or "screen" quality. Choose the latter and resulting pdf file is about half as big.

It works beautifully.

[carmar1791]

I use primopdf too , it's very good but it produces very big pdf files.
Acrobat professional produces files very very smaller than Primopdf

[bartmeijer]

I'm struggling with file sizes, compression, and what not. Here's what I use and how I use it:
I have a Linux system and use kooka and a HP 1402 all-in-one for scanning.
When I select "lineart" pictures, kooka chooses a black/white threshold itself, and it is always wrong: black stains all over the place.

Question 1: is there a way to select a black/white threshold in kooka, so that I can scan to 1-bit pictures directly?

As things are now, I scan to 8-bit gray scale images, saved as bit maps (huge: 34 MB). I load them into the GIMP, and use Tools->Color->Threshold and Picture -> Mode -> Indexed to convert to black and white. Saving to tiff, I do not get the CCITT 4 option. Options that do work result in over 500 kB per page.

Question 2: how can I store tiff files with CCITT 4 compression from the GIMP or otherwise?

Any help is much appreciated.

Bart

[Yagan Kiely]

I started scanning a Mahler book I have (I have a terrible scanner and I was just messing around because I was bored), after the first few scans I realised that each page was 40mbs with 200+ pages.

I believe that might be a smidgen to high!

[Leonard Vertighel]

Saving to tiff, I do not get the CCITT 4 option.

Works for me (GIMP 2.6.2). Just be sure to convert to 1-bit indexed (under Image > Mode) before saving.

[carmar1791]

To bartmeijer:

1I don't use kooka but gscan2pdf it's easyer ligth and very very faster program and you can change threshold after scanning, set compression ,save in pdf,png tiff etc....
I know in xsane you can change threshold and many other things too but It's slower and more difficout to use (but complete and very professional).I have never used kooka but surly there will be a command to set threshold.

2 In gimp 2.6.1 and all other programs, you can reach cct4 compression only if you image is B&W but I see that you converted it in gray scale !!!! Pay attention to have B&W file to compress by cct4 ! (Immage>Mode>Idexed>1 bit B&W)

If you use png (B&W)files usually you get the same result with less problems (the default conversion usually is good)

Greetings

Carmar

[Lyle Neff]

Here's a trick I figured out accidentally a few weeks ago -- tell me if I've got this right:

In my IMSLP files, I like to make the margins fairly narrow, and definitely not as wide as they are on the original pages. (This is advantage for printing.)

Lacking a "batch" command in my image editing software to trim all the margins of the TIFFs uniformly before making the PDF, I found out that if I first make the PDF in Acrobat from the TIFFs, set the margins that I want,* then "Save As..." TIFFs again (in a new folder), the new TIFFs have been reduced with the trimmed margins. Then I can re-make the PDF again from the smaller TIFFs.


(*Of course, in Acrobat many pages typically need individual attention to set margins, but at least you can get a uniform size for the cropped images within one open file.)

[carmar1791]

That is a sistem.
There are many others if you don't have acrobat.
In gimp if you use david's batch plugin you can do the same .
If you use linux you can do this with image magic too

Ciao

[bartmeijer]

Thank you, Carmar and Leonard, but no luck so far.
Installation of gscan2pdf fails -- the thing complains about unsatisfied dependencies even after all the packages listed are installed.
My GIMP version (version 2.2.17.40) has been translated into Dutch, therefore I don't know the exact English names for the menu items. Nevertheless, Image>Mode>Indexed to 2 colours (1 bit) per pixel is what I did, and still the program stores the image in 8 bpp.
Maddening.
Installed xsane; could not find a menu item or button for threshold value. There is a setup>enhancement option for a threshold value, but it has no effect whatsoever on the scan produced. I'm beginning to suspect that the scanner itself does not support setting an external threshold. Probably that is why kooka did not offer the option in the first place.
However, the resulting black-stained image can be saved to a .png file with 1 bpp. Loading this into the GIMP and saving it as TIFF produces a TIFF file with 8 bpp!
I'm calling it a day.
The smallest file size I have been able to produce from a 600 dpi scan of an A4 page is just short of 400 kB. Is that acceptable?

Bart

[Leonard Vertighel]

My GIMP version (version 2.2.17.40)

Seems an older version, maybe it doesn't support CCITT? As I said, I tried with 2.6.2.

[bartmeijer]

Seems an older version, maybe it doesn't support CCITT? As I said, I tried with 2.6.2.

Curiouser and curiouser! In the repository for Suse Linux, the most recent version of the GIMP is 2.4. I have installed that; see what happens.

[bartmeijer]

It works! The Gimp 2.4 can produce CCITT 4 compressed TIFF files.
Thanks everyone!