I use Adobe Illustrator to design each page and then merge all the pages together with Adobe Acrobat Professional to make a multi page PDF document. The problem I have now is that the file size is often way too big. How do i reduce, say a 50 page PDF document to no more than 5MB? I have tried PDFcompressor but it changes nothing at all and the size remains the same. Any help appreciated.

Using large images squeezed into smaller image frames could be contributing, maybe even the main cause of your problem. I downloaded a single-page PDF recently, which was 10Mb in size. The reason turned out to be a large (around 5000x4000 pixels) straight-out-of-the-camera image displayed in a frame 1/10th. the size. If this is the case, I'd suggest reducing the images to PDF display size - I use IrFanView for this as it's quick and easy. You can reduce the data size even further (for JPEGs) by reducing image quality below 100%. I've found 70-80% has no noticeable impact on the apparent quality of the final image.

Hi, i have irfanview and i understand where your coming from in regards to reducing image size, but the problem is i dont use images in my pdf, just the occasional illustrator graphics. Is there anything i can do within illustrator to reduce the page resolution or quality? I have tried leaving just the text on the page and then exporting with full compression and i get 1.3MB just for one page! Please advise. Thanks.

I was on the wrong track I see, still. the technique may be of use to others. It must be Illustrator - a single page all-text PDF shouldn't be any bigger than a few tens of K in size. The PDF contains as much (or more) embedded formatting/positioning code as text, but even if you used a different font and size for every letter, I still don't see where the rest of the 1.3Mb is coming from - could be that Illustrator adds a lot of bumf to the PDF and only compresses the minimal text part. Perhaps the creators of Illustrator came from the same programming school as those that wrote Microsoft Word. I have a trial copy of Illustrator somewhere - maybe I'll install it and have a look at a generated PDF with a hex viewer.

In your Start menu find Acrobat Distiller. Open it up and go to the settings. There should be some predefined settings in a drop-down box to configure the quality. One of them is called something like "Print Quality" - this is intended for commercial printing and requires a good deal of information (about 1200 dpi I believe). Try setting it to another setting (sorry I can't recall the names off the top of my head and don't have access to Acrobat on this computer). I do know there is one designed for normal printing (about 300 dpi) and another for web (~72dpi). if none of those suit you, you can create your own setting. Michael J

thanks !

Splendid, I realised that illustrator graphics were 300dpi on default, so i switched it to 72dpi. As for distiller, i made it the lowest dpi possible, and now my PDF file is a nifty 72KB, from previously being 1.3MB! Thanks for all the help :)