File Size after Headers/Footers added ...

[jeffpvt]

We have a 3.5 meg PDF that, when PDF'd with headers and Footers (simple text, nothing fancy), explodes to 25 meg's.

Any ideas on how to keep the file size down?

Thanks,
JP

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi jeffpvt,

thanks for the post. Can you perhaps send us the PDFs pre and post process to compare?

Also what are you using to add the headers/footers? The Viewer doesn't have this feature as such. Are you running it through the standard driver and if so which version?

regards

[jeffpvt]

We are using PDF XChange Viewer and just adding basic text in header and footer ... in the print properties under Settings/Headers-Footers.

The original PDF file is 3.5 megs and 280 pages of text (no photos).

After I print it with basic H/F is goes to 24.8 (if I use more text, say left and right header and footer ... it will go to 30).

Actually, I just noticed that if I print the same 3.5 meg PDF without h/f it comes out to 24.7.

So I guess the real question is .... why does a 3.5 meg pdf turn into a 25 meg pdf when it is PDF'd.

thanks,
JP

[Nico - Tracker Supp]

Hi jeffpvt,

The size of your pdf file can get bigger after you print it with the PDF XChange Printer and this is the expected behavior. For example, your pdf source file may contain images objects with vector graphics, which describe how the images have to be rendered by the PDF XChange Viewer but don't contain the images by themselves, these are produced when the Viewer processes and renders them. The final image result is of a bigger size and this is part of the file that the PDF XChange printer prints when you create a new pdf document.
The capability to create headers and footers from the PDF XChange Viewer will be added on version 3. In the meantime, we can suggest a workaround that consists in creating a new pdf document with the headers and footers you need and blank pages; and merging both, the original and the new documents into a single pdf by using PDF Tools.
To create the new document with the headers, footers and blank pages you can either:

• Add blank pages from the Viewer (from Document->Insert Pages menu) and then print them by using the PDF XChange Printer with the Headers and Footers option (from File->Print->Properties->Headers/Footers menu))

• Create the new document with your favorite text editor that supports Headers and Footers (i.e. Word) and print the document with the PDF XChange Printer

Once you have the new document in PDF format, you can merge it with the original file by using PDF Tools.
Hope this answers your question.
Thanks,

[jeffpvt]

ok ... thanks. still a little strange that a text based pdf would expand 10x when re-printed.

anyway, seems like there is a difference between "adding" headers/footers and "printing" with headers/footers ... and that "adding" will come with the next version.

I will try the work around but am concerned that it will still create large files ... and be clumsy ... looking forward to version 3.

thanks

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello Jeffp,

Please make sure that you are printing text as text as if you have the "print as images" option, or are printing all text as curves - this could increase the file size.

If you can upload the 3.5 meg version of your file we will be able to tell if it's really text only or if there are some images that aren't quite obvious.

Best,
Stefan

[jeffpvt]

So ... we took the 3meg file and opened it in Adobe 9 and hit the "optimize" button and it dropped the file size to 1 meg ... then I printed headers/footer in XChange viewer and it bumped the file size up to 1.8. Not as bad as before, but still the size doubled with the addition of very little text. Seems that the improvement to "add" headers/footers vs. "printing" with headers/footers would the a great improvement. (that is the way Adobe 9 does it)

One other thing that we noticed in this adventure was that Xchange could not optimize the file to be any smaller that 3 megs, but Adobe 9 dropped it to 1 meg. Not sure what is going on there.

Anyway, thanks for the support. We generally like the software, we are just running into a couple of limitations that make us keep a couple of copies of Adobe around.

Thanks,
JP

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello JP,

Glad to hear that you've found alternative solution!
As for the discussion we have here - without the actual file it's a bit hard for us to comment, but have you tried to run this file through our PDF Tools and optimize it there and see what the resulting file size would be?

Best,
Stefan