[OS X TeX] Compressing pdf graphics

[Alan Litchfield]

Luci Ellis wrote:
> On 22/5/07 10:46 PM, "Alan Litchfield" <alan at alphabyte.co.nz> wrote:
>
>>
>> Luci Ellis wrote:
>>>
>>> Perhaps not within LaTeX, but certainly within OS X.
>>>
>>> http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/smaller_pdf.html
>>>
>>
>> This will convert images to JPEG, which will be less than satisfactory. Try
>> looking at ps2pdf (a description is at
>> http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/AFPL/6.50/Ps2pdf.htm) which can emulate
>> some
>> of the more useful Distiller functions.
>>
>
> This doesn't seem to be the case when I tried it just now. Then again, it
> didn't exactly compress the files I tried it on.

The process described in the Apple Tip of the Week converts graphics JPEG,
PNG, etc. You can alter the quality of output to reduce file size.

> But the graphics inside the
> PDF (PDF graphics inserted as part of a run of PDFLaTeX) were definitely
> still full definition and not JPEG bitmapped -

Yes. That's right, pdflatex doesn't rasterise vector based inclusions. It is
the process described on the Apple website (and others) that does. They are
unrelated.

> They were still full
> definition no matter how much I magnified the view of the file.
>

If you find the quality of images produced during the rasterisation of your
plots is acceptable. Then by all means, go for it. Otherwise if you want to
retain high quality (press quality, for example) then I advise you use ps2pdf
with the appropriate options set. Or, you can use Distiller to achieve still
more control.

Alan


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