[scribus] Re Smaller file sizes?

[Nigel Ridley]

Julian Robbins wrote:
> How can I produce a reasonable looking 2 page (A4) PDF file that is less
>> than 1 Mb?
> 
>> I have done everything in the export to PDF to get the file size down
>> (resample to 72 DPI etc).
>> How do the competition manage such small file sizes?
> 
> I have this problem a lot with datasheets I produce.
> 
> I recommend using this script http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Web_optimised_PDF that someone came up with that is excellent for two reasons :
> 
> 1: It uses ghostscript and postscript to completely reform the PDF, resulting in far, far smaller PDF's without losing image resolution. Scribus devs have always said that the way Scribus produces PDF's is compliant but not good at small file size. This gets around it. I have compressed PDF's by 10 times without any loss of image quality with changing image DPI.
> 
> 2: The way that Scribus produces PDF's also does not form proper readable, indexable plain text. Go to Adobe Reader and try save as text, and see what happens. If indexation of text is important to you, then the script reforms the PDF so the file is completely indexable - great for web PDF's, and for Google to index it too.
> 
> The only issues I have noticed is :-
> 
> Stick with PDF1.4/1.5 format for export, PDF1.6 seems to give blurry text. Dont know why.
> If you use images with transparent sections, ie pngs. then the transparency isnt respected, and you will get a black area where it should be clear.
> 
> Good luck
> 
> Julian
> 

I just tried the above perl script and it works a treat! I managed to get my 1.3 MB [email 
version] down to 391.6 KB - and the JPEGs are a better resolution (if I tried to view them in the 
original [72 dpi] PDF in anything above 100%, they looked terrible) I can even increase to 150% 
and they still render OK!
A very happy camper :-)

Just to make clear what I did:
Used Scribus to create the [2 page] document, using 300 dpi JPEGs; then exported to PDF (for 
printing, keeping the 300 dpi for the photos). I the ran the perl script on the newly created PDF 
file thus:
nigel at laptop:~/Documents/PDF_scripts$ ./compress-newsletter.pl 
/home/nigel/Hamaayan/Newsletters/September-08/Test/Sept-08-print-EN.pdf
(all on one line)
You have to make the perl script executable first - and don't forget the './' at the beginning.

Blessings,

Nigel

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