Expert: Amy - 7/31/2007

Question
Hi Amy,
I have illustrator CS. I have a file i received from a free lance artist. It is a ai
file and is approx 1.3 megabits. This file is very complicated and is made
from many layers and clipping masks.
Now i aways seem to have better luck with printing these files when i save
them to a PDF file and then i print them.
But my problem is when i save as a PDF that 1.3 mb file turns into over 30mb!
Im just using the default save as PDF settings.
How can i reduce the file size without sacrificing the quality of the image??

Thanks for your help.

Brian

Answer
Hi Brian,

That's large.
The first thing that comes to mind is that the artist has used some embedded images that you can apply at least a little compression to without losing quality.

Forgive me because I can't remember exactly where version CS keeps the PDF quality/compression options.

But I think it's after you choose Save As... PDF
Adobe PDF Format Options
General
1 - Turn off Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities
2 - Turn on subset fonts
3 - Turn off Embed ICC Profiles
Compression
1 - Set the compression for grayscale and/or color images to Average downsampling at 300dpi (does CS have bicubic downsampling choice? If so, use that)
2 - Set compression to JPEG; Quality to Maximum
3 - Turn on Compress Text and Line Art

See if that doesn't give you some results?
Amy