Free PDF Creator?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jeff
  • Start date Start date
On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 13:23:54 +0100, Ian Jackson

~In message <[email protected]>, Harvey Van
Sickle
~>On 09 Jul 2005, ozzy wrote
~>
~>>> Anyone know of a totally free, fully functional, program to
~>>> create .pdf files?
~>
~>> I have been searching for one too for a long time and have found
~>> none. So far the only one that allows 100% TRUE fully functional
~>> create/edit/print/etc... is adobe.
~>
~>Sorry for the thread drift, but it sounds like you know your pdf's,
and
~>I hope you can clarify something for me.
~>
~>I've never been able to afford Adobe, so I've tried various pdf
~>creators; they all have a *huge* drawback as far as I'm concerned,
in
~>that the document has to be a single printable entity before it can
be
~>sent to the virtual printer to create the pdf.
~>
~>The way I work, that seems to bloat the thing to an incredible
extent.
~>
~>Example (which I've just tried with CutePDF). I have a report which
~>consists of a text file (a few KB) and 15 .jpg images, which in
total
~>comes to 8.7 MB. If I create a *single* file to turn it into a pdf,
I
~>can roll the 15 .jpg's into the Word document, but the resultling
..doc
~>file is 138+ MB -- 15 or 17 times the cumulative size. If I send
that
~>to CutePDF turns out a 24 MB pdf file.
~>
~>A few questions: can adobe (or anything else) "build" a pdf
directly
~>from the original 8.7 MB collection of .doc + 15 images, or do all
of
~>them require the document to be consolidated first?
~>
~>If Adobe can do the compilation of the pages -- rather than the
~>sequence of "files/word/pdf" -- would an 8.7 MB collection still
~>produce a 24 MB pdf?
~>
~>Finally, is there a better way to combine a .doc and 15 jpg's to
~>produce the single file for apps like CutePDF which, unlike Word,
~>doesn't bloat the thing to 15X the size of the inputs?
~>
~>Thanks for any comments.
~>
~Harvey,
~If you are producing a Word document with 15 jpgs which turns out to
be
~8.7MB, then you may be doing something wrong. It may be because of
the
~original filesize of the jpgs, or of the way you are inserting them
into
~the document.
~
~The first rule for minimising overall filesize is to ensure that the
~filesize of the original jpgs is no larger than is necessary to
produce
~an adequate resolution and quality of the pictures. For example, 100
dpi
~is probably more than sufficient. Also, use a fairly high amount of
~compression. An image (say) 2" x 2" generally need only need be about
~25kB at the most.
~
~One 80 page document I worked on was 48MB. 20MB of this was ONE of
about
~25 images, which, when 'sucked off' the document turned out to be
20MB
~in its own right! It was only about 1" x 2", but you could have blown
it
~up to the size of a football pitch, and still cut your fingers the
~sharpness of the image! I eventually reduced the document to about
~1.5MB.
~
~The second thing is to insert the image using the 'Insert' facility
on
~the Word toolbar ('Insert', 'Picture', 'From File'). Although you CAN
~insert from an opened image (right click, Copy, and Paste), this
makes
~the Word document large. Worse still, you can insert by simply right
~clicking on the filename. This produces absolutely horrendous
filesizes.
~You can even fun out of memory while doing it.
~
~One of my work colleagues does use the 'proper' Adobe Acrobat. He to
~often produces large pdf filesizes. I understand that Adobe Acrobat
has
~the facility of choosing the resolution of images, so you can start
with
~a Word document with high resolution pictures, and reduce them in the
~pdf. The freebies don't seem to have this facility. However, most of
the
~pdfs which I produce are, at the most, only about 50% greater than
the
~original .doc.

Holy smokes, I convert word docs (and powerpoint/excel files) to PDF
using Primo all the time so I can search thru 'all the files' at once.
Every file i've ever converted was always 1/8-1/4 of the original
size. Most of my docs have lots of pictures, or are power point, or
excel to start with.

~
~Finally, if you are copying something from an existing .doc to paste
in
~another, try using 'Edit', 'Paste Special', and 'Paste As Picture'.
This
~can also vastly reduce the filesize (especially with graphics).
~
~I hope this helps. Sorry for the long posting.
~Ian.
 
Harvey Van Sickle wrote, re using OpenOffice.org to create PDF files:
Thanks; I may give that a go -- I tried OpenOffice a couple of times,
and was extremely impressed with it; but as I have a working copy of
Word on the machine there's not been a huge incentive to switch.
(It'll happen when I next need to upgrade, but that's not often as my
word processing needs are very, very basic.)
Click to expand...

Some people who use MS Office have Openoffice installed and a desktop
shortcut to soffice.exe, simply to drag Office documents onto it and
export as PDF.
 
Father Guido said:
Holy smokes, I convert word docs (and powerpoint/excel files) to PDF
using Primo all the time so I can search thru 'all the files' at once.
Every file i've ever converted was always 1/8-1/4 of the original
size. Most of my docs have lots of pictures, or are power point, or
excel to start with.
Click to expand...

You must send me a copy of your version of Primo!
I have never found that something, when PDFed, gets smaller. Not much
bigger, maybe, but never smaller.
Seriously, though, this calls for a bit of experimentation.
Ian.
--
 
lugnut said:
snipped


Harvey,
One thing I should have mentioned and I am not entirely sure
of this: If you drag and drop an image, the entire image is
added to the final file which rapidly increases it's size.
By using the Insert Picture, I believe you are basically
just linking the image to the document. This means the
linked image and document cannot be moved if you ever want
to reproduce or edit the document from the original. That
may explain why the file is so much smaller when inserted
instead of D&D. You may want to play with it to be sure
what is happening. One thing is for sure: when you print it
to CutePDF, the images are part of the document and cannot
be moved. This is precisely why I wanted to go to the PDF
printout - I can send an electronic copy of my report to the
client w/o worrying about him editing my reports for me and
always have my original.

Lugnut
Click to expand...

I don't think that 'Insert' produces a link to the image (in fact I'm
sure of it). It really DOES stick the image on the document. You can
easily test this by deleting the original image.

The best thing is to do a series of tests to compare the resulting
filesizes when you attach the picture in different ways (eg as per my
earlier posting), then PDF them and compare again. There are all sorts
of things you can tweak in order to produce the smallest filesize
(including the dpi of the Primo 'printer') while still obtaining a
satisfactory result. This is what it's all about, really.

I have a 'thing' about people who produce unnecessarily bloated
filesizes. My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 (Timex 1000) - well,
actually it was my son's hand-me-down) - so that explains it all.

By the way, one option in Paperless Printer is to produce a series of
jpgs from each page of a document. You can then look at them as a slide
show. This could have some uses....

Ian.
--
 
I don't think that 'Insert' produces a link to the image (in fact I'm
sure of it). It really DOES stick the image on the document. You can
easily test this by deleting the original image.

The best thing is to do a series of tests to compare the resulting
filesizes when you attach the picture in different ways (eg as per my
earlier posting), then PDF them and compare again. There are all sorts
of things you can tweak in order to produce the smallest filesize
(including the dpi of the Primo 'printer') while still obtaining a
satisfactory result. This is what it's all about, really.

I have a 'thing' about people who produce unnecessarily bloated
filesizes. My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 (Timex 1000) - well,
actually it was my son's hand-me-down) - so that explains it all.

By the way, one option in Paperless Printer is to produce a series of
jpgs from each page of a document. You can then look at them as a slide
show. This could have some uses....

Ian.
Click to expand...


Ian,
I do not use MSOffice. As i indicated, I mostly use Lotus
WordPro (I've used it since the original Ami before M$ had a
word processor - old dog/new tricks thing) and save to
either .doc or .lwp formats before printing to .pdf. Using
the "import picture" command increases the size of the file
some. If I go into my file manager and move or delete the
image files from the location in which they were in when
imported, WordPro will indicate the links need to be edited
to display the images. If I do a copy/paste or D&D image
insert, the file size increases dramatically with each photo
but, the image can be save and reopened normally. Again, I
am using WordPro. I occasionally use either Openoffice or
PC602 but my findings are similar. Another thing I
understand is that the .jpg files are already compressed and
cannot be reduced much more when saving or printing. That
is why I resorted to reducing the size of the images to the
needed size before inserting into a document. Certainly,
more experimentation is needed to explain exactly what is
happening. There has to be a better way of doing this. I
hate using most of a CDR just to archive a report.

Thanks
Lugnut
 
lugnut said:
Ian,
I do not use MSOffice. As i indicated, I mostly use Lotus
WordPro (I've used it since the original Ami before M$ had a
word processor - old dog/new tricks thing) and save to
either .doc or .lwp formats before printing to .pdf. Using
the "import picture" command increases the size of the file
some. If I go into my file manager and move or delete the
image files from the location in which they were in when
imported, WordPro will indicate the links need to be edited
to display the images. If I do a copy/paste or D&D image
insert, the file size increases dramatically with each photo
but, the image can be save and reopened normally. Again, I
am using WordPro. I occasionally use either Openoffice or
PC602 but my findings are similar. Another thing I
understand is that the .jpg files are already compressed and
cannot be reduced much more when saving or printing. That
is why I resorted to reducing the size of the images to the
needed size before inserting into a document. Certainly,
more experimentation is needed to explain exactly what is
happening. There has to be a better way of doing this. I
hate using most of a CDR just to archive a report.

Thanks
Lugnut
Click to expand...

Noted.
However, I might have been a bit wrong about PDFs never being smaller
than the original .doc. I've just PDFed two Word documents of 77kB and
1.6MB. Visibly, these looked identical. The filesize difference was due
to the filesize of a single inserted photo (which was obviously making
the larger file far larger than necessary). The filesizes of the PDF
versions are 86 and 88kB respectively (and these also look identical).
Interesting!
Ian.
--
 
Back
Top