IMSLP Forums

Hi all,

First of all, I think IMSLP is a wonderful community, and I come to you guys because of the knowledge you have garnered from all this.

I am a conservatory student and I utilize an iPad to read pdf's of my music for school. I usually have quite a bit of music to learn, so therefore it is important for my music to be convenient. My problem lately (past several months) has been with Image Quality vs. File Size vs. portability (pick any two).

When making a pdf with tiff, I get a pdf that is small and lossless, but my iPad will take FOREVER to open it. I'm talking about several minutes just to open the file.
When making a pdf with JPEG, I get a pdf that is large (for better quality) but it usually opens immediately.

Is there a trade-off that I haven't discovered? Or, can I somehow reconvert my Tiff PDF's to JPEG with minimal file size gain?

I have both Photoshop and Acrobat at my disposal.

Firstly, are you using (if such a thing yet exists) the official Acrobat Reader app by Adobe? Secondly, the issue here is the way the PDF packs the images, i.e., the internal compression routine. While both image formats are compressed, TIFFs are optimized for 1-bit or 8-bit content and employ internal compression algorithms specifically for this. JPEGs often use compression optimized for high color spaces. Can you give us examples of types of PDFs that open slowly on your device? And have you found some PDFs of black-and-white images that don't lag when opening?

Is there an IMSLP iPad app? I hate to say it - not being a Steve Jobs fan - but they could have been made for reading IMSLP scores.

CoolBone wrote:can I somehow reconvert my Tiff PDF's to JPEG with minimal file size gain?

You can use a free tool named PDFill PDF Tools (http://www.pdfill.com/) as follows:

1) use the "Convert PDF to images" function. Set format to jpg, set a reasonable value of resolution, and set the "JPEG Quality" cursor to a reasonable value. You may need to experiment a little bit to find the best tradeoff between resolution/JPEG quality and the resulting jpeg file size. All pages of your pdf file will be then converted into separate jpeg files;

2) then use the "Convert Images to PDF" function to recombine all separate jpeg files into a single pdf file. That's it.

Max

Philidor wrote:Is there an IMSLP iPad app? I hate to say it - not being a Steve Jobs fan - but they could have been made for reading IMSLP scores.

I'm actually well on the way to finishing an iPad app that uses IMSLP content. You'll be able to
* browse by composer (and search by composer name)
* filter by tag/nationality/period
* search by composition name whlie within a composer's works list (important for composers with lots of compositions, like JS Bach)

And of course, view the PDFs, page-by-page.

If you (or anyone else) has other ideas of what should go into an iPad app, I'm all ears!

--Gardano

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7584266/Pryor%2 ... otland.pdf

Yes, I am using Adobe Acrobat 9. But will also use photoshop to take my scans and make them all purtyful.

I guess the problem is the LZW compression? But can I use tif and not get ginormous files?

Choralia wrote:You can use a free tool named PDFill PDF Tools (http://www.pdfill.com/) as follows:

Max

Wow, fantastic. Exactly the solution I was looking for for my past creations.

Thanks!

daphnis wrote:And have you found some PDFs of black-and-white images that don't lag when opening?

Generally any JPEG B/W pdf works fine. I am currently finding that jpegs with Resolution of 3x(1024x768) have the best size:quality ratio on the ipad's screen.

JPEG settings:
-(1024x768)x3
-Grayscale
-300dpi (not necessary really)

(I'm an audio guy naturally as a musician, also do a lot of sound recording, but am VERY n00b at this visual stuff)

gardano wrote:And of course, view the PDFs, page-by-page.

That strikes me as the key element. A string quartet arrives with four iPads - one each. They stick them on their music stands, enter the appropriate IMLSP url, then play. They finish playing, the audience applauses, everyone goes home.

The test of your app is if it enables that to occur. I suspect it doesn't! The string quartet still needs to chop down trees to play the concert.

Philidor wrote:

gardano wrote:And of course, view the PDFs, page-by-page.

That strikes me as the key element. A string quartet arrives with four iPads - one each. They stick them on their music stands, enter the appropriate IMLSP url, then play. They finish playing, the audience applauses, everyone goes home.

The test of your app is if it enables that to occur. I suspect it doesn't! The string quartet still needs to chop down trees to play the concert.

Of course that's the meat and potatos of the app. I'm curious why you suspect that would not occur?

Actually, the IMSLP app will cache all the composer/composition/score file data. So they would not have to type in any URLs. They would either navigate to the composition, or select it from their "favorites" in the app, and have it all ready to go. If it's not already downloaded to the iPad, provided they have an internet connection available, it's automatically downloaded once they navigate to the Score screen.

-- Gardano

@ gardano Apologies, that does sound great, particularly this bit:

gardano wrote:Actually, the IMSLP app will cache all the composer/composition/score file data. So they would not have to type in any URLs. They would either navigate to the composition, or select it from their "favorites" in the app, and have it all ready to go. If it's not already downloaded to the iPad, provided they have an internet connection available, it's automatically downloaded once they navigate to the Score screen.

There was no mention of that in the main thread about the app, hence my confusion. All power to your elbow!