NationStates Jolt Archive

I'm trying to get a half-million word document converted into as small a pdf file as possible. Currently at just over 12 megs (without pics). I'm aiming for 3 or 4 megs. Any suggestions? (I'm currently using Acrobat 5.0)
Thanks!

I'm trying to get a half-million word document converted into as small a pdf file as possible. Currently at just over 12 megs (without pics). I'm aiming for 3 or 4 megs. Any suggestions? (I'm currently using Acrobat 5.0)
Thanks!
Creative editing.

Creative editing.
Not an option :(

Just out of curiosity, what is this 500,000 word document?

Just out of curiosity, what is this 500,000 word document?

A book that I scanned

Why not just break it up into a couple of different parts?

That way people can read one PDF while the rest are downloading.

I may have to. I'm hoping for another solution, though.....

what file format are you converting it from?

I don't mean to pry, but what book did you scan?

I'm just curious as to what book is 500,000 words long, and has pictures.

Format: Does it make a difference? So far I've just tried Word. Would it be a smaller file size if I converted it from something else?

Book Name: The Shepherd's Staff. It's basically a small library printed in book form and given away free in countries in which there is not too much Christian material available. More info available at www.world-map.com

how big is it in word and how many pages is it in pdf now?

are you wanting to make it pdf so it easy to print out?

In Word: 13+ meg
pages pdf: still formatting. Probably 700-800 or more.
Pdf: Three reasons. Ease/accuracy of printing. Ease of storage. Bookmarks!(You kind of need them with this large a document)

i dont think you can make it any smaller then.

any chance of making the font size smaller so you end up with fewer pages?

i dont think you can make it any smaller then.

any chance of making the font size smaller so you end up with fewer pages?
Yes! Will this help?

im not sure but anything that reduces the number of pages that need to be printed while keeping the whole thing legible is good. 800 pages can be a burden to whoever you are giving it to

Actually, they're all looking forward to it :). The original book is 1000 pages. I'm just trying to make it more convenient (and smaller file) for everybody.

its not gonna get much smaller. if i were you id take nadkors advice and break it up in to its component library parts. that will make it easier for them to share with others too.

There's no way to decrease the size of the file if you're bookmarking all the chapters and sub-chapters. As others have said, you're better off breaking the book down into component parts.

However, you should be able to compress the PDF files into a zip file so that you have a smaller size when it comes to emailing, FTPing, or downloading the files, so you don't use as much bandwidth to deliver them (or make them available from a website or whatever).

A book that I scanned
if its a scan then i'm assuming its going to be scanned as a bitmap, in which case there's little you can do to reduce its filesize (short of compressing the crap out of it making it unreadable) if its embedded in any file format.

what you want to do is run the text of the scan through an OCR trace program that will read all the characters and re-type the text for you. or just type it all out again yourself. if you do the former i strongly advise you to check it after cos ocr's aren't the most reliable/accurate programs...
then just extract the pictures from your scans and lay it all out again

pain in the arse but having all that text as vectors, assuming your pictures aren't huge, will help a lot


you could also try resampling the images down to 150 dpi rather than the standard printing resolution of 300 - they'll still look fine when printed and onscreen, but smaller filesize w00tness

Already OCR'ed, of course......
I've got it down to 3.5 meg by printing to pdf from notepad. Only problem is, now I need to add the bold and italics back in. Any idea how to do that?

bump

bump

Already OCR'ed, of course......

ah ok

I've got it down to 3.5 meg by printing to pdf from notepad. Only problem is, now I need to add the bold and italics back in. Any idea how to do that?
use wordpad?

Already OCR'ed, of course......
I've got it down to 3.5 meg by printing to pdf from notepad. Only problem is, now I need to add the bold and italics back in. Any idea how to do that?
You are totally crazy, eh? :eek: Yes, i know how to get bold and italic back. It involves weeks of work and Pitstop, an Acrobat add-on. Sorry, if you want different fonts you will have to go back before the notepad version, otherwise its editing word for word, because notepad does use plain text and not richtext or another tagged version which includes a history of the fonts etc..
Point me to a download of your 10 mb version or send me a telegramm and i will look into it, ok?

I've spent countless hours of my free time over the last year on this project. What's another few weeks?
Checking out pitstop now.
The document is not yet online, and not fully formatted (pre-pdf) yet.

If you have the full version of Adobe Acrobat, you shouldn't need to use Pitstop to add in bold and italic - the full version of Acrobat has text edit features.

What does Pitstop do?

Try CuteWriter 2. It will convert any Word format file to pdf, the conversion function will appear in a scrollbar on the Print Menu.

EasyPDF is also good, my dad uses that, though my experience with it is limited. Both are available as free downloads.