Comments on: Creating smaller PDFs from a vector-dense book

By: Thomas Damm

Thomas Damm — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 11:04:05 +0000

@David: Just in case they don’t, I have filled out a form through their website, suggesting changes done

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:56:49 +0000

@Thomas: Actually, I like your idea more and more, but not because of PDF. For me, the idea of rasterizing objects would be extremely useful for EPUB or even HTML export. So, thanks! Let’s hope that Adobe is listening.

By: Thomas Damm

Thomas Damm — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 08:57:45 +0000

@David: You defintely have a point but I think it can be solved in various ways. Inspired by you I would suggest that InDesign got a new layer option so it became possible to just choose a layer for rasterization BUT with a popup-dialogue where you could check/uncheck different “types of vectors”

Like this:

———————————————————
Chose things to rasterize on export

InDesign items:
- Text
- Line art

Placed items:
- EPS
- PDF
- AI

Output resolution for rasterized vectors:
LOW (72 dpi)
MEDIUM (150 dpi)
HIGH (300 dpi)
CUSTOM | dpi|

OK CANCEL
———————————————————–

But ofcourse, like any other method, this way can have its own ‘issues’ depending on workflow and uasge. I basically think it could be done in thousands of ways with different levels of complexity and ease-of-use, appealing to different users and it doesn’t necessarily need to be my way – just some way, some day

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 03:43:44 +0000

@Thomas: It’s an interesting idea, but how would you determine which vector graphics should be rasterized? Would you want all the text rasterized? Simple vector diagrams and logos? In 99% of the cases, I want everything to stay vector; it’s just a few instances where I really want to rasterize a complex vector. I think it would be interesting if InDesign did offer a way to rasterize one or more objects (or mark them for rasterization), but I don’t think I would use it for pdf very often.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 20:41:24 +0000

@David: I think Adobe should enable vector rasterisation options in the PDF print/export settings. Similar to the settings where you can chose how much you wish acrobat to downscale you raster images there should be an option to do so and to chose the level of detail for the process.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 22:46:51 +0000

@Thomas: I hear your pain, but I’m not sure what you think Adobe should do. If you have an InDesign document that has a lot of vector art, it’s all going to be inserted into the PDF, making it bigger. Just like if you have 5000 pages of words it’ll make a bigger pdf.

By: Thomas Damm

Thomas Damm — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 22:42:11 +0000

CS5 now, and still no solution to the core of this problem. ADOBE where are you???

By: Quick Tips: Reduce your PDF file size « CMU 2nd Year Studio

Quick Tips: Reduce your PDF file size « CMU 2nd Year Studio — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:33:47 +0000

[...] to pdf. And if you have a lot of lines (i.e. placing more than one Illustrator file), check this out, [...]

By: Ingrid Villalta

Ingrid Villalta — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:08:27 +0000

I had the same problem, I solved by:
Saving a copy of all my illustrators -Export- JPG to a medium resolution.
Then I make a copy of my indesign file and I replaced all of them for the JPG files.
Then I exported as another name for PDF with screen presets.

I hope it works for you!

By: Max Russell

Max Russell — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 03:38:57 +0000

Did you try this?
From Indesign go to print your document.
Click the ‘printer’ button.
Choose ‘Save as PDF’.
Click print.
The result is a rasterized pdf