Compressing an Illustrator file as pdf 1

[Coppertopped]

I'm a new Illustrator and Acrobat user. I need to save an Illustrator file as a pdf in a fashion that will allow me to email it and get through my company's firewall (having problems with file size), but still have a high enough resolution to print well when emailed to our printing group. Thanks!!!

 

[blueark]

Because Illustrator is largely vector based, saving as a pdf should result in a small file with excellent printing resolution. The main exception to this is when you place pixel based artwork (photos, etc).

There's no hard and fast rule for reducing the file size and retaining quality. In the PDF Options dialog box, there are a few settings you should experiment with to try and get good results. One is Average Downsampling... which specifies the resolution you want your pixel based images to be exported to. Next, try different compression methods (JPEG usually gives the greatest compression, but overdoing it can result in poor quality). You will probably want to select the Compress Text and Line Art option too, as this will compress other elements in your file without losing quality.

Every image is different. Experiment, and you will soon get the hang of it!

 

[Coppertopped]

Thanks, Blueark. What I just tried today and found out was that when I add jpgs to the file, it increases the size of the file immensely. It started out as a 183K file, but after adding a jpg of just 33.7K, it bumped up to 1.41M!! After adding 3 more jpgs, a tiny logo and 4 text boxes, the file size was a whopping 8M+, so evidently it's not my inability to compress to pdf properly, it's adding jpgs to the file that increases the size. The exact same objects, when done in a PictureIt file, resulted in a file size of only 515K. Why does this happen, and how can I fix it? I'll be eternally grateful!

 

[blueark]

A few things to check out. When you Save As... and hit save, there's the Adobe PDF Format Options.

The General options that appear by default have an option called 'Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities' which should be deselected for files that you are sending to people who don't need to edit it in Illustrator.

Before clicking OK, change the General options to Compression, and check the Average Downsampling & Compression checkboxes. By experimenting with different values here, you should be able to reduce your file size by a very significant amount. For example, making sure the compression for color bitmap images is set to JPEG rather than ZIP will drastically alter the file size.

Just be sure to keep a master copy of your file saved in Illustrator format just in case anything goes wrong.