Making a PDF smaller

[CES020]

I have a quote package I'm doing and I'm trying to do a much better job in presenting the package than I have in the past, so I thought I'd save it out of Illustrator as a PDF, each artboard being 1 page, 10 pages total.

It's renderings of signs, 8" or so square. I drew them all full scale, then scaled all of them down to 25%, which fit 6 of them on each 8 1/2" x 11" artboard.

I saved the file to PDF, 10 pages long, 275MB. WOW........okay, that's a little overkill.

Opened the Illustrator file back up, selected everything, rasterized it at 72dpi. Saved as PDF again, 14MB......dang it.

How in the world do you get small PDF files that look decent? What setting am I missing? Or what steps am I missing?

 

[Rick]

Do you have distiller?

 

[heyskull]

It all depends on what programme you are using to create a pdf.
I know Signlab, Corel and Adobe allow you to change the size of the pdf.

SC

 

[jfiscus]

Document > Reduce File Size (in Acrobat)
Or change your settings in Illustrator. Possibly the number of vector points is too complex to reduce any further & that's the minimum you get from that original document. Rasterizing the files (save for web) and placing those into another "proof" document may reduce file size some more, but small file size & nice proof do not go hand-in-hand sometimes.

Also Yousendit.com has a free large file email process that we use frequently when the images are too big to be emailed.

 

[CES020]

Do you have distiller?

I do. Not sure what it is or does, but I think I have it!

I thought by rasterized the entire file at 72DPI, we'd be all good, but apparently not.

I've got a fileshare/drop box available, so I can do that if I decide to.

Hey, they might be the secret to not having your art work spread around. Make the file sizes so large they can't email to other sign shops!

 

[Locals Find!]

If you use something like drop box. You can restrict the access to your files. You can make them where they are viewable only. That way they can't be downloaded or shared. That is what we recently started doing and it works great. Also, don't have to worry about file sizes as much then.

 

[Rick]

I do multiple pages in Illustrator, then print out to file in .ps format then go to distiller where you have various options on file size.... I have a few 80 page documents only hitting 8-10 mgs on the smallest file size.

If you have all the pages together in .pdf, you can do what jfiscus mentions and make the file smaller in Acrobat Pro

 

[CES020]

Great, thanks Rick, that worked like a charm. 2.8MB so we're all good to go, it's been emailed to the customer and with any luck, we'll have an order for a full building signage package today!

Thanks for the help from everyone!