Change in print behavior, Viewer->PDFCreator ?

[mathog]

Greetings.

Up through last year I sometimes used PDF-XChange viewer to reduce the size of PDF files containing class lecture notes. The method was this:

Code: Select all

Download and open orignal in PDF-Xchange Viewer
Print
  select PDFcreator
    all pages
    portrait
    paper size 1024 x 768 (XGA)
    300dpi
    fit to printer margins
    auto center
  OK
  Save on Desktop
Compare original to reduced resolution.

Last year that typically led to a 4X reduction in PDF size. However, this year it leads to a 3X INCREASE in PDF size. Both PDF-Xchange viewer and PDFCreator have been updated to current versions since last year. At first I thought the pages were bitmapped, because "Find" didn't work in the new copy, but instead there seems to be some problem with converting the Mac font "GillSans" which going in has text properties showing readable characters, and coming out has font "xvc2B.tmp", and text properties just shows squares where the characters should be.

Near as I can tell the program settings were maintained across the updates. Anybody know how to tell where the extra size is coming from? Also, how to get MacRomanEncoding fonts to convert properly?

Thanks.

[mathog]

Oops, forgot to give the current version numbers.

PDF-XChange Viewer: 2.0 build 44.0.
Ghostscript: 8.62
PDFCreator: 0.9.5

Not sure what the versions were back when it worked.

[Chris - PDF-XChange]

Hi mathog,

Not being familiar with PDFCreator it is hard to say. Have you downloaded and tried an evaluation copy of PDF-XChange 4 Lite, try it out and compare the results, resulting files will be watermarked in evaluation mode but @ $24 it is a small expense if you're happy with the results. It could be the fonts in the original we're not embedded and sending a PDF file to a PDF converter again can lose proper font encoding and ends up "xvc2B.tmp" or the like. In our 4 Lite product there is a setting in the Misc. settings to embed extended font/character encoding, this may solve things, and let me know your findings.

Regards,
Chris