'Downsizing' a PDF file

[electrojim]

I have a PDF image scan of an old book, about 200 pages, that had been scanned in full color for some reason. The file is about 23MB, and I wanted to reduce it so that I can put it on my e-reader. So I opened the file in PDF Xchange viewer (Ver. 2.5, Build 208.0), and then 'printed' it using PDF Xchange Lite 4, specifying a physical page size to fit the small format of the old book and changing the printing option to Grayscale. All pages printed, they came out in grayscale, all right, but the file size is now 83MB. Am I overlooking something? How can I reduce this file size? Many thanks.

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Hi electrojim,

thanks for the post and welcome to the forums. I have seen a similar this when printing from the Viewer to lite. It would be better to use the Standard Printer as it has image compression options not available in Lite.

Having said that - I would like to consult the development team on this. I'll let you know here what I find out.

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Hi Jim,

well I did some tests and ironically my result was the exact opposite. I Printed from PDF-Xchange Viewer build 209 a 8.8MB image based file and the resultant file was only 278KB!

Now I suspect that in my case it was because each page of the document was a repeat of the original - 100 of them and that it referenced the images rather than each being a discrete page.

Can I get you to zip up your source file and post it that I can test with your example?

[justposted]

@electrojim: Try clicking on Properties in the print dialogue, then reduce the Graphic/Resolution value to something like 150. Should help to bring the file size down.

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi Justposted,

Thanks for the suggestion, however, that isn't an option that is available with PDF-XChange Lite. My suggestion to Jim would be to either try Paul's suggestion of using the Standard driver, or to see if using Lite 2012 (Version 5) helps at all, and for him to get back to us with the results of that, as well as the source file that Paul requested.

Cheers!

[justposted]

But I use PDFX Lite, and that's how I do it. In fact I was doing exactly that yesterday evening, which is what prompted me to post it here.

Maybe it's because I'm using v5? Or does Viewer Pro somehow unlock extra functions within Lite?

If the former, given that it is free (for non-commercial use), maybe you should try installing the latest version, electrojim.

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi Justposted,

I see what you mean now! My apologies for misunderstanding there, I thought you were referring to a tab of its own within the Lite Driver properties! However, after testing this, the default 300 created a 34kb file from a 230kb file. At 150, it still created a 34kb file - it doesn't appear that will help him. I personally would classify that as a pretty good reduction though, and I got that with PDF-XChange Lite 2012 (Version 5), so my suggestion would still be to use Lite 2012, and see how that works, then let us know!