Re: Word & PDF file size bloats

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Well, he doesn't mention that because he may not be aware of it. But that's
almost certainly what is happening :-)

His editor sends him an email containing a 6 MB PDF attachment. It was
probably 17 MB on her disk, but if she sent using Entourage or another
advanced email program (e.g. Lotus Notes) it would automatically Zip the
attachment without her being aware of it. 17 MB will become 6 MB if the
content is mainly text.

When he gets the email, he can see the file is 6 MB. When he saves it, his
email program helpfully unzips it for him, and it's back to 17 or 22 MB or
so. That's all normal operation, except that neither email program is
telling the users what is happening. Don't worry about the apparent
disparity in file size: it depends on how the system is counting it and what
it is actually counting. Open the file and look at the "number of bytes"
and you will see they are the same size.

The bottom line is that PDF is generally too big to email anywhere, which is
why I suggested emailing the file as .docx. The .docx format is tightly
compressed natively, you don't have to bother zipping it (it IS a zip
file!).

As to PNG losing quality, it doesn't. That's the purpose of its existence.
PNG was created to avoid the quality loss inherent with JPEG and GIF. So if
you get poor quality results with PNG it's because the input was poor
quality: probably because you tried to make them from a JPEG.

The difference is that JPEG removes detail to preserve colour. PNG removes
colour to preserve detail. Which makes JPEG a good choice for photos of
people, because it gets the face tones correct. Use PNG for everything
else, because it preserves the resolution.

The only better choice for quality is EPS, which offers unlimited resolution
and colour, but you will have trouble with them outside the professional
publishing industry. EPS and its siblings need high-end graphics
applications installed to work correctly.

Also: When we came in to this discussion, the complaint was about file size:
adding EPS graphics to the mix would be a giant leap in the wrong direction
if that's the problem we are trying to solve :-)

Hope this helps


On 13/10/09 2:45 AM, in article uYz7OM1SKHA.1236@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Rob
Schneider" <rmschne@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Isn't the O.P. saying that he receives PDF file and when they save they
bloat. He mentions nothing about unzipping or extracting them from a
compressed file (far as I can see).

--rms

www.rmschneider.com





Phillip Jones, C.E.T. wrote:
If the file has any images it can indeed become larger. Its the way PC's
handle Graphics. Graphic on a Mac sent to windows machine will grow 2-4
times the size. and if the reverse would be 2-4 times what they would be
if created on the Mac. Png and jpeg seems to be the best format with the
least amount of Ballooning

John McGhie wrote:
Hi Tim:

It occurs to me that if the "content" of that PDF were to be scanned
bitmaps, then it would indeed bloat up: to about 20 times its size, when
unpacked.

I guess the key question for the OP is "When it is expanded at the other
end, can the other user EDIT the file?"

I think we need to learn what exactly is in that thing...

Cheers


On 12/10/09 2:25 AM, in article
0001HW.C6F77121000267E5F0182648@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Tim Murray"
<no-spam@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:58:04 -0400, MichaelC wrote:
In particular, when I save an emailed file the size bloats
tremendously.
So, for example, a 6 MB pdf file suddenly becomes a 22MB pdf file. .
. .
I'm forced to compress many files, which I shouldn't have to.
Something is wrong with this picture. A file that shows itself as
some size
in your e-mail should not expand upon saving to disk. And also,
compression,
if you mean zip, usually does not save a whole lot of space in a
PDF. You
you zip a PDF and you shrinks a great deal, then, well, frankly I'm at a
loss.
And about that compression: In another post you said than an inbound
file
bloats when saved, but your original post would be valid for
outbound. Do
files bloat in both directions? You send a 6 and your friend gets a 22?
Your friend sends you a 6 and you get a 22?

Finally, in any case, Acrobat's "reduce file size" command work well.




--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:john@xxxxxxxxxxx

.

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