Real World Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications

Handling Image Content

The primary cause of a PDF file’s size is image content, so if you want to make a smaller PDF, that’s where you have to squeeze. It’s a bit of a juggling act. You have to balance the size of the PDF with the results of compressing and resampling images and decide whether to compromise image appearance to create a more petite file. When making decisions about image compression and resampling, you have to consider the nature of image content as well as the intended use for the PDF file. If the document’s text is the most important content, and images are just incidental accents (such as gauzy, out-of-focus photographs of soft clouds), then you can be more liberal when compressing images. However, when the images are key ...