Optimizing PDFs?

[mbear]

Hello! A quick-ish question for Ray: How much of a pain in the neck would it be to optimize the PDFs before they're released?

I've run several of the Touring the Stars PDF's through Acrobat Professional 7's PDF Optimizer with "Make compatible with" set to Acrobat 7 and later. This resulted in excellent compression. Here's the details:

Name	Original file size	Optimized file size
Touring the Stars: Sherwood	12.1MB	5.06MB
Touring the Stars: Regis Roost	9.6MB	6.09MB
Touring the Stars: Noisel	52.8MB	31MB

I have limited space on my phone and this would help me tremendously. It also benefits CGL as smaller files == reduced bandwidth costs.

I also realize that this would be more work for you, hence phrasing my question "How big a pain in the neck would it be?" rather than "Can this be done?"

If it's too painful, no problem. I don't want to slow down production any more than I have to. But if you could allow me to fit more of the excellent content on my phone to read, that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time!

Mbear

[Adrian Gideon]

In the past it’s led to compatability issues across mutiple platforms and apps. Space is much less an issue than having to troubleshoot all that, or tell customers “tough.”

[mbear]

Fair enough. Thanks for the reply.

[Adrian Gideon]

To clarify my off-hand comment, I’m not telling you “tough luck”—I meant that I didn’t like not being able to prioritize finding solutions for those suffering compatability issues, so the alternative of larger files was preferable to leaving those customers out in the cold.

-Ray

[mbear]

To clarify my off-hand comment, I’m not telling you “tough luck”—I meant that I didn’t like not being able to prioritize finding solutions for those suffering compatability issues, so the alternative of larger files was preferable to leaving those customers out in the cold.

-Ray

I didn't take it as "tough luck." I think you have a reasonable concern and a reason for not optimizing the PDFs, and you let me know what that was.

In other words, I heard the implied "We're sorry for the inconvenience." ;)