Can a PDF be "Re-Distilled"?

[lazariel]

Am new to acrobat, beginner, and want to create a pdf document, complete with links, photos, etc distilled for print (300 dpi). No problem here, but would also like to "re-distill" it so that it can be easily viewed/downloaded on the web (72 dpi)...can this be done without recreating the document, especially it's links? And if so, how...can't seem to find anything on this, but it seems so unrealistic that you would have to recreate everything in order to do this.

thanks
Chris

 

[Eggles]

Yes, you can redistill. Open the PDF in Acrobat and treat it as you would treat making a PDF from the original document. i.e. select your PS printer, select your job options (compression etc) and away you go. Of course, you have to have made the high-rez version first, and make a low-rez version from it and not try the other way round!). I know of at least one person on another forum who refers to this as 'refrying' the PDF. It is the only way to go if you don't have access to the original file from which the PDF was generated.

Alternatively, if you have access to the origianl file, why not just change make two PDFs, varying the job options? I often make a low-rez version and a high-rez version of the same pagemker file (for various reasons). You don't have to go back to 'square one'. Make a postscript file (as per the recommended two-step method, instead of exporting to PDF in one step) and distill it twice, each with different job options e.g. "press" for a high-rez version suitable for sending out for commercial printing and "web" for a low-rez onscreen version.