PDF Size reduction for technical manuals

[RS_9035142]

Dear Team,

Current PDF size generated using PTC Arbortext Publishing Engine is too large (4x times). We had similar instance in 2016, when ATX version was increased from 6.0 to 6.1. PTC informed us that, PTC had ended the partnership with Adobe and the Adobe plug in used in the PE was removed. This issue is still not resolved.

Currently we are on Arbortext Editor 8.0 version and still facing the issue of PDF size which we want to reduce below 10 MB size.

This is business critical for us as we are not able to share the Owner Manuals with our customers due to heavy size issue.

Please let me know if you need any other details

[bfriesen]

We have found the same issue with pdfs generated from PE. PTC fixed the issue with creating postscript files in the 8.0.1.0. Our process is to publish to postscript then use adobe distiller to create the final pdf. It will be way smaller than anything PE will do. Send me message if you need more information.

Bryon

[GarethOakes]

There are a number of things you can do here.

1. Bryon's idea - print to PostScript and then distill in Adobe Distiller
2. Print the PDF as usual and use Adobe Acrobat to compress the resulting PDF prior to delivery
3. Investigate what is blowing out the PDF size (hint: it's usually images and rarely font embedding)

For #3 you can use Adobe Acrobat to audit the PDF space usage:

If it is images that are the problem then there are a number of steps you can take to reduce the PDF size by compressing the images. For example, in some situations it is possible that vector files (EPS, SVG, etc.) are being rasterised which causes a file size blowout. In other situations high-res images are being used but not downscaled to suit the web PDF needs.

[bfriesen]

Thanks Gareth, we have tried option 2 with some success. We currently use CGMs and have found that changing some of the cgms to pdf, cuts down on publishing time and file size also.

Bryon

[acoosemans]

The huge size is indeed typically coming from the images. We are also adding pre- and postprocesses to our publishing pipeline because the available APP configuration options to compress the graphics are way too limited. Next to that, we educate the users as well to pay attention to the file size of graphics. Default settings in image editors like Adobe Illustrator blow up your file size (e.g. adding transparency info while no transparency is used, adding meta data, ...)

To PTC, more detailed compression options are a must. Some examples:

• A PNG can typically be compressed by reducing the colors. But typically, you don't want to downsample the resolution.
• A JPG can typically be compressed both in resolution as in quality.
• Compression on raster images embedded in vector graphics would be nice.
• etc.

[bfriesen]

Another way we have had some success in reducing file size is to make the images pdfs. Then when you publish it to pdf then it does not need to convert it.

Bryon

[SimonTaylor]

This is a hot topic for sure, and one which we have taken up with our PDF library supplier.

As Gareth says, it is rarely fonts and normally images. From what I've seen so far in my investigations, the main culprit for file-size bloat is the use of CAD information, either as GCMs or something else. These file types tend to have a huge amount of data which is converted to a lot of information in the PDF.  You might also see this as a lot of X Object Forms in the PDF, those are often containers for images. The forms themselves don't take up much space, but the images themselves do. Advice on the Adobe community is to avoid EPS as a graphic format when producing PDF so investigate converting CGM to PDF and then using that as the graphic.

We'll continue to look into this, though

Simon

[manpsingh]

Hi,

There are few articles link which also explain how to reduce the size of the PDF.

Article 1- https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article/CS000213411

Article 2 - https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article/CS111897

[SimonTaylor]

Hi

In the 8.2.0.0 release of Arbortext, and in ALD 12.2.0.0, we added some new functionality which will greatly reduce the PDF file sizes when using EPS as the graphic format (and that includes those EPS generated from the conversion of GCM).

The 'images' element can now carry two additional attributes:

• epsPathAccuracy - indicates the number of decimal places to use when converting paths in EPS files - lower values will result in smaller file sizes. The default is 2
• epsPathCompression - one of:
  • 'off' - don't compress path data (the default)
  • 'small' - optimise EPS path data but preserve accuracy
  • 'smaller' - optimise EPS path data further, but may affect accuracy

These options are also available in ALD to reduce PDF file sizes in the PDF print options.