So, in the last post, I talked a little about my Web 2.0 Expo talk in NYC. After my talk, I was asked to submit my slides so they could distribute them. Exporting my Keynote file to PDF yielded a file somewhere around 25mb. The uploading system wouldn’t take anything above 15mb, and the e-mail system at O’Reilly apparently only accepts 10mb files, so I couldn’t even send it that way.
It was suggested by the O’Reilly folks that it might be worth removing the backgrounds or other images involved in the slides, but that wasn’t a solution, as far as I was concerned. I tried a few other methods, like saving each slide out as a JPEG and then making a PDF from those, but nothing was really doing it.
The Light of Knowledge Thus Did Shine Upon My Head
Then, I did something I should have done right away: I asked Ali. Her design skills and experience don’t end on the web — when she worked as a print designer, she had to deal with PDFs in all sorts of ways, often needing to shrink them down just like this.
Moments later, I had a 3mb PDF of my slides with almost no noticeable compression. Problem solved. Since then, a few other people have asked me about the same issue, so I figured I’d share the secret. The only prerequisite is finding someone who has Acrobat Pro.
First, print the Keynote (or whatever) document to a PostScript file. That’s right, print, not export, and PS, not PDF. This will yield an ENORMOUS file. 376mb for me.
Next, open the PS file in Acrobat Distiller. By default, this will convert to a PDF at High Quality. This gave me a 7mb PDF about a minute later. Too big? Keep going…
If you select the Smallest File Size setting, it will get much smaller. Mine came out to 873kb, but it had some significant degradation. Still, it wasn’t awful. Too small? Keep going…
The Standard setting worked out best for me (shouldn’t standard be the default?). It finished with a 3mb file and almost no visible degradation to speak of. Just right!
Nothing crazy here, but it was a tool I’d never used before, and have used a decent number of times since then. And using Distiller is great and all if you have it, but I know lots of folks don’t. Anyone have a good way to shrink a PDF like this using free-ish tools?
Well, you don’t need any tools if you have a Mac, you can actually use Preview to shrink a PDF. I even wrote about it, after you mentioned it here. I’ve been planning to write it, but I finally decided to write it today. You can find it at
http://beyondteck.blogspot.com/2008/11/how-to-reduce-pdf-file-sizes-on-mac.html
I don’t think it’ll be as effective as Distiller though, but at least it comes along with the OS…
Great blog by the way! I really enjoyed reading it!
Thanks Rishi, that’s a great pointer. It looks like it would definitely do well enough in a pinch!
Oh nice, I was just looking for how to do this, wish i would have seen it a week ago. Thanks!
Thank you very much for these tips!
One further question to pose: How to reduce Keynote file sizes while still show builds and animations? Ideally the output format is Powerpoint as this is a industry standard and programs like Adobe Connect do not support PDF format yet.
Any thoughts?
@Cragg: Interesting question. Builds would tend to be easier, I'd think, but animations should be tough. Note that I don't personally ever export to PowerPoint, and don't necessarily buy into the claim that it's quite as much an industry standard as you might suggest.
My take on putting together presentations is that builds and transitions are like CSS and JavaScript (respectively) on the web. Without them, the important content should still be there, but they're layers that can help in the course of a live presentation.
But the short answer to your question: I don't know anything at all about making a PPT smaller nor how successfully Keynote can export to a proprietary format like PPT. No matter what, it wouldn't be something I'd rely on.