Smaller PDFs with Presentable Quality Using Custom Settings

In the process of distributing art as PDFs via email for review and approval you sometimes end up with some pretty beefy-sized PDFs. Although the PDF format is great for it’s compression, you can still face the challenge of a PDF that is too large for emailing. But if you compress a file too much, you may end up with images and graphics that are of poor quality. There are ways of avoiding these problems by adjusting PDF creation settings.

First of all, the old ‘best’ way of making a PDF was by creating a postscript file, then running it through Acrobat Distiller, with adjusted settings, to get good quality and good compression. Distiller still exists, it just runs behind the scenes within the built-in PDF saving features in Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop. The setting adjustments are all done within the “Save Adobe PDF” dialog box. You get to this dialog box, under the File menu, in Illustrator by choosing ‘Save As…’ or ‘Save a Copy…’, in InDesign by choosing ‘Export’ and in Photoshop by choosing ‘Save As…’. Then just choose PDF for the format.

By choosing any of the menu options noted above, you will arrive at the dialog box shown here.

‘Save Adobe PDF’ dialog box in Adobe Illustrator.

The resulting PDF saved with the default preset, in Illustrator, will give you good quality for viewing and printing. But you will be left with a file size that may be too big for emailing. The example below, using the Illustrator Default preset, generated a 22.5 MB file.

Zoomed in, you can see that the quality is very good.

The major contributor to a large file size for a PDF is usually a bitmap, or photographic image, as shown above. So that means you’ll want to adjust the settings under the ‘Compression’ tab, as shown below. What I’ve found that works the best for reduced file size with good quality images is downsampling to 250ppi for images above 299ppi. Since most high res images are 300ppi, you want to make sure to type in 299. This setting reduced the same 22.5 MB file to a 1.9 MB file. The quality of this PDF is great for on-screen viewing and printing. If you are just concerned about on-screen viewing or placing in PowerPoint or Keynote, 150ppi instead of 250ppi will work just fine.

Other settings to consider, within the ‘General’ screen, are unchecking ‘Preserve [Illustrator or Photoshop] Editing Capabilities’ and selecting the latest version of Acrobat under the ‘Compatibility’ drop down menu. You can also experiment with different settings within each tab of the dialog box to see the results.

‘Compression’ screen with options to downsample bitmap images.

If you are happy with the results of a particular group of settings you should save the settings as an Adobe PDF Preset. To do this, click on ‘Save Preset’ in the lower left corner of the ‘Save Adobe PDF’ dialog box. You will be presented with a field to type in a custom name (see below). Type in the name a click ‘OK’. This preset will now always be in your ‘Adobe PDF Preset’ drop down menu. Even if you were in Illustrator when you created the preset, it will also be an available preset when using Photoshop or InDesign…and visa versa.

If others in your workgroup like the results of your PDF settings, you can pass the preset file along to them. To do this, in your Finder, navigate to /Users/your user name/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe PDF/Settings. In there you will see custom presets with a ‘.joboptions’ extension. For example, I have a preset called, ‘Hi-Quality, Low File Size.joboptions’. You can grab a copy of your ‘joboptions’ file and pass it along to somebody else who would then drop it in the same location on their computer.

Saving a group of settings as a preset.

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Digital File and Folder Naming

Digital file naming has been a hot topic since the majority of office desks have included a computer. There are many opinions and some facts that keep us all guessing about what to do when naming our files. All I can say is what I’ve come to learn through my own opinions and my experiences.

My primary opinion is - keep it simple and safe. And that means, use only letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores. There are some opinions that underscores are even a no-no. I haven’t found that to be an issue. The ‘do not do’ of file naming is - no special characters other than hyphens and underscores AND no spaces or periods (only before the file extension).

The primary issue with file naming is not necessarily how the files live on an individuals computer it is more about transferring files via email, FTP, web download, compression, etc. What happens here is that, at times, the file names clash with the internet application coding.

But there is a good chance that your file will transfer without any problem if you ignore the naming rules. That’s just how it is sometimes. It is sometimes hit-and-miss. But why take the chance?

There is one rule that you should never ignore and that’s the use a period (.) in your file name. Except for the period right before the file extension. Periods are universally recognized in coding languages as stops or separators. So more often than not, any character after a period in your file name will be ignored resulting in the truncation of the file name. This could lead to problems in certain applications recognizing the file or some files with links looking for the a file with the original name.

These rules apply to folder naming as well.


Keep it simple, as shown here:

01913-FileName_300x300_PrintAd.pdf

Great Set of Desktops/Wallpapers for Adobe Apps

Just found this link to download some great Desktop Pictures (Mac)/Wallpapers (PC) that will help you remember the keyboard shortcuts to the tools in each app for Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign & Flash.

Click the following link Tago Artwork, then right-click on each desktop/wallpaper image to select a save option from the contextual menu.
Tago Artwork


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