[scribus] DPI and PDF question (Nigel Ridley)

[Nik]

Hi Nigel,

My apologies if I am butting in here, but I thought I'd just add my 
experiences.

> On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 08:36:04PM +0300, Nigel Ridley wrote:
>   
>> >> I need to produce two versions of the same newsletter.
>> >> The first will be to send to our local printing house as a PDF with the 
>> >> graphics at 300 dpi.
>> >> The second version is for sending via email.
>> >>
>> >> Am I right in thinking that prior to saving the second version as a pdf, I 
>> >> can reduce the overall resolution to, say 72 dpi? Will my graphics stay the 
>> >> same physical size in the layout?
>>     
I do exactly this regularly.

Yes you are correct that the graphics will stay the same size in the layout.

To get a reasonably-sized PDF for email, I do the following:

1. embed and outline all fonts (was "outline" called "subset" in earlier 
versions of Scribus?)
2. resample images to 72 dpi (I do the same for EPS but we seldom 
actually use EPS)
3. enable image compression, method=lossy - JPEG, compression 
quality=High or Medium

These settings work well for our newsletter which is typically 12 pages 
with about 20 images.
The end result is usually about 500kB (half a megabyte) in size.

Greater reduction can be achieved using lower quality image compression 
(if you need it).

For us, the greater challenge actually is to get the high-quality 
version of the document small enough to send through the printing 
company's lobotomised email server.

Maybe you want to try this first, as it works all from within Scribus. 
If the PDF is still too big, then try the command-line compression 
suggested by Tino.

Cheers!
Nik