Expert: Amy - 11/1/2007

Question
Hi there, I make 100% vector based posters and always end up with huge
Illustrator files (50MB - 80MB can i make them smaller?). When i save them as
pdfs (optimized for press), the gradients i use dont flow nicely. I also tried
converting to tiff in Photoshop and results were terrible. Any advice please?

Answer
Nick,

A few suggestions:

1 - Don't outline your text, embed the fonts. Very often, converting text to outlines adds a lot of data.

2 - In your PDF preferences, try playing with "Smooth Shades" option. While it works for some situations, it may not work in your case and I think it is in the default setup.

3 - When you generate the PDF, apply a little bit of compression (Max or Very High quality are usually just fine) and optimize for press (you already said you do).

4 - Run the action that DELETES UNUSED PANEL ITEMS.

5 - If you have Acrobat Professional, you can run the PDF optimizer which makes PDFs smaller.

And lastly, most printing is done in CMYK. Although RGB files are typically smaller, you'll see better color matching if all your elements are created in CMYK-based colors. But that's up to you! The results when you print from RGB to a CMYK device, the results are often terrible...

And thank you, you just reminded me I have a poster to complete today!

-Amy Pace