Trying to "flatten" out *.jpg in a pdf file.

[mbrittb]

A friend of mine has given me a pdf file that is made up mostly of "embedded" JPGs. It was created in such a way that all the JPGs are avaliable to export etc.

This has the unfortunate side effect of making the file size very large. Also, when tring to page throught he document each page is very sluggish due to the number of JPGs that have to be read and displayed each time you scroll or page down.

I have been able to reduce the file size by opening up this document in Acrobat 7.0 and saving it in Acrobat 5.0 format. Unfortunatlly the paging is still sluggish.

Is there a way to "flatten" (I know that isn't exactly the right word" all the JPGs into a single "graphic" for each page? I don't care if I retain the ability to export the JPGs.

Thanks,

 

[jmgalvin]

I assume you're using Acrobat, not Acrobat Reader. If so, open the pdf and go to File menu Reduce File Size. This usually results in a large size reduction.

You can also go to Advanced menu/PDF optimizer and do a lot of reductions/changes there.

Using OSX 10.3.8 on a G4

 

[mbrittb]

Yes I am talking about Acrobat, not Acrobat Reader.

I have gone through the "Reduce File Size" steps. The only thing I was able to do is save it as an older Acrobat format (which I have done) and that did greatly reduce the size.

I have also tried to go through the "Advanced menu/PDF optimizer", but I couldn't get that to help my problem.

When I open up the file (in Acrobat or Acrobat Reader) I get a pop-up window that says :

This Adobe PDF has special features

Click on the Picture Tasks button in the toolbar to activate
Tools for working with pictures in the document:

- Export, edit, and save pictures
- Create slideshows with your favorites
- Share pictures online and other high-quality prints.


I assume that this means that the actual JPGs that this PDF was created with are somehow directly encoded in the PDF file (since you can extract them). By going to "Picture Tasks -> Export Pictures" I found out that there are over 4000 JPGs avaliable to be exported. Apparently each page is made up of several individual JPGs. I believe that while viewing a page (or scrolling) the JPGs on that page are having to be read over and over again, slowing down the viewing process making it sluggish. What I am tring to do is to simply convert each page to a single "graphics" page (rather than a set of JPGs) to help the viewing operate more smoothly.

 

[jmgalvin]

This Adobe PDF has special features"

Usually that means you have a pdf created by Photoshop. Depending on the size of the PS images and the downsampling on the create pdf settings, the files can be quite large. JPG is a lousy format to dreate pdfs fron because the included pdf comression cannot compress an already compressed jpg, even if the jpg is saved at highest quality.

Depending on the use of this pdf, you can greatly reduce the file size by opening PDF Optimizer and setting the image downsampling a lot. Where it says "for images over" insert 1 ,b so ALL are downsampled. If you select 72 dpi - for screen display - the reduction will be dramatic - as long as the images are not already 72 dpi.



Using OSX 10.3.8 on a G4

 

[Eggles]

What about opening each page of the PDF in Photoshop? Then you could specify the resolution of all the JPGs on that page to be whatever size gets it down low enough. Resave as a PDF. I have no idea if this will reduce the file size but it may be worth trying.