Making Better Originals

By far, the best way to reduce file size is to start with clean originals. You can make cleaner originals using the copy machine. The reserves copy code is 01150.

Starting with original material, you can:

• enlarge the original using the zoom feature
• reduce the effect of dark backgrounds using the copy lighter feature -- the copiers in the copy room work better for this than the one in the mail room
• reduce shadows in gutter margins and improve readability of text near the margins by pressing gently, but firmly on the original as you copy
• separate side-by-side pages by recopying one page at a time and using the zoom feature to enlarge the text

Starting with a copy, you can:

• separate side by side pages using the image separation feature and placing the pages in the feeder with the bottoms of the pages facing left. This feature is only available on the copier in the mailroom.

Adjusting Scanner Settings

You can reduce file size by scanning at 200 dpi instead of our usual 240 dpi. This creates a significant drop in quality, but works well for long readings with very clean originals.

If the article has dark text boxes, you can reduce file size and improve quality by increasing the brightness to 100%.

Theoretically, you can also use OCR (optical character recognition) to reduce file size. However, it's not practical. It's extremely time consuming, often has character recognition errors, and sometimes causes problems with readers where only the text or only the image is transmitted. Since you have to scan at 400 dpi (or more) to get reasonable OCR conversion, the file size isn't always smaller.

Using Postscript Compression

Acrobat Capture 3.0 automatically optimizes file size. However, if you do significant cropping you can further compress the cropped file.

1. In Windows Explorer, open up the ereserves folder and select the specifid PDF file you want to work on.
2. After you have opened up this file (it is automatically opened through Acrobat), crop off any black edges and extraneous text using the cropping tool -- it looks kind of like a pound sign #.
3. Go to the top menu bar. Click on the File menu, and within that menu, choose "Save As" and save the file under it's current name. You'll get a message saying that file already exists, say "OK".
4. Click on the File menu again and choose “Print”.
5. A big, gray box will appear on your screen, and at the top, there is a drop down menu where you choose which printer the job is going to. Scroll down the menu and click on Adobe PDF (or any other postscript printer) as your printer.
6. To the left of the printer-selecting menu, there is a little white box that says, “Print to File”. Click on that box.
7. Click “OK” at the bottom left of the big “Print” box when you have completed Steps 3 and 4.
8. Another box will now pop up, asking you to pick a name and location for the Postscript file that you are about to create. Enter in the name of the original PDF file (e.g. biost51309), but add “.ps” to the end of the name (biost51309.ps). The “.ps” makes this a Postscript file.
9. Click “Print” or “OK” to print the Postscript document to a file.
10. Close the original document that is still on your screen.
11. Go to Windows Explorer, and open the postscript file you just created.
12. Double click on the Postscript file to open it. The file automatically opens in Adobe Acrobat Distiller, simultaneously converting into a PDF file that is of smaller size than the original.
13. You'll need to double-check the article because sometimes pages get rotated in this process and you'll need to rotate them back.

TIP: The larger the original PDF file, the greater the difference between original and new file sizes.

TIP: You can play with the distiller settings to get even smaller file sizes. A good article about doing this is available on Planetpdf.