Any suggestions for shrinking a PDF file?

Question

We\'ve got a .net 2.0 web system that dynamically builds pdf files. Some of these files can get pretty large - 12MB+. While processing time isn\'t a factor, really, the size

Answer 1

There are multiple flavors of PDF with different size functionality trade-offs. If you are converting text-based documents (word/excel/etc) versus image documents (TIFF/JPG/BMP/etc) then it would probably explain the smaller file sizes that distiller gives you. You need to make sure your utility is not just creating Image-only PDF files (which a typically much bigger) out of everything. Also the compression format is very important ESPECIALLY for color documents. Look for configuration options that allow you to tweak those settings. If you mention the specific PDF builder tool we might be able to give you more specific help on that.

Here is a decent reference on the "flavors" of PDF files: