I'm a webdesigner working with an outside designer who works in CorelDraw x7 on a PC. She has produced a PDF of a season brochure for several years, all with a file size of about 1 MB, which is good for web distribution. This year, the PDF is nearly 12 MB, which is too large.
The designer says that she has embedded all fonts, but I see that in running my cursor over the pages, it is mostly an arrow or cross. On some headlines it changes to an insertion point and I can copy those letters. I take it that those headlines are set as text (I see in the File Properties that their fonts are all subsetted as well).
When I run my cursor over the text, it doesn't turn into an insertion point. The text appears to have been outlined, because even at extreme enlargement, the outlines remain smooth, but the designer swears that she has not turned the text to outlines.
She says that she flattens the image backgrounds before making the PDF, and I'm wondering if that affects the text
It is true that in previous years the designer used Corel x6, but she says she has tried using x6 to make the PDF, but it still produces a large file.
I work on a Mac and can reduce the resolution of the image portions of the file in Adobe Acrobat, but even converting to rather low resolution doesn't change the file size much. The problem must be in the outlines: presumably forcing the text to remain as text using embedded fonts would resolve the problem. As a non Corel Draw user, I don't know what to tell her.
Any suggestions? Thanks!
I suspect there are a lot of settings that are being missed just prior to making the pdf. In corel you can opt to "publish as pdf" for web, prepress, editing, etc which will all produce different file sizes. You can also turn all text to curves, which I highly recommend. It's in the settings. Especially if drop shadows and/or transparencies are used. Those are better converted to raster first.
Myron
You recommend turning all text to curves, but it appears to be in curves (outlines, as I usually say — perhaps that shows the influence of Adobe).
I think curves will usually produce larger files than embedded fonts. That's because I expect that curves must be duplicated for each new instance of a letter, whereas embedded fonts allow reusing the curve information for each new instance.
Yes, probably some settings are being missed before the conversion to PDF, but then it's odd that all the PDFs from previous years were relatively small.
Chris von Rosenvinge said:You recommend turning all text to curves, but it appears to be in curves (outlines, as I usually say — perhaps that shows the influence of Adobe).
Negative. Don't convert to curves. If you convert to curves ("convert to outlines"). the file size will increased. Send the fonts as text, and embedd all fonts.
If you want a smaller file size, you can use "PDF for document distribution" on the preset list. But if you want to reduce manually you can use JPG file compression inside the PDF (under the Objects tab) and set more compression ratio. Also, you can reduce the resolution of the images, since it's only for web, not for print. For example, 150 dpi instead 300 will be reduce the file size
Harry, does that mean when I import a pdf and it tells me fonts are missing that they didn't "embed" the fonts. The only reason I'd suggest that all fonts be converted is to ease any headaches. I can see though that it would create a larger file. And while on that note why does corel give you the option when importing pdf's to import fonts as curves when it really doesn't work anyway?
Myron said:Harry, does that mean when I import a pdf and it tells me fonts are missing that they didn't "embed" the fonts.
Probably not. The PDF will usually include only the necessary subset of characters needed to print the PDF. This is usually all the font author will have granted permission for anybody other than the original font purchaser to do.
If you want to edit the document, then you must install the fonts locally -- which usually means buying a copy, if you do not already have the fonts. There may be exceptions, but usually you are not allowed to use the embedded fonts for further editing -- otherwise nobody would buy the fonts.
As an alternative, the originator may convert fonts to curves when creating the PDF. Or you can ask CorelDraw to convert the characters to fonts when importing, but I've come across PDFs where even that is not allowed.