I’m writing today about a hard-fought lesson I’m learning. While I completely understand the “why” aspect of this little chat, I find myself hung up on the “how.” So, without further delay, here’s the tip:
Don’t send huge file attachments — even if people know they’re coming!
A little background…
In marketing, I find myself sending drafts, revisions, and proofs of projects I’m working on all the time. (I e-mail a lot of mock-ups as well, but they’re generally low resolution to begin with, so they’re not so much of a problem.) But when it comes time for the boss to see the final version of a new brochure that we’re about to send to print, how do I make sure he gets the full effect of the project’s image quality / layout / design, etc. without bombarding his Outlook Inbox?
I’ve tried a number of methods, to include: 1. opening the Illustrator .pdf in Photoshop and compressing (BAD idea), 2. running it through Adobe Distiller (equally BAD) and finally, and 3. experimenting with different compression options when saving the .ai file as a .pdf in Illustrator itself.
I’ve found that in all of these “shots in the dark” the closest I’ve gotten to an acceptable (e-mail friendly) file size and print resolution is via method 3 above. So, in hopes that it will bring you closer to e-mail file-sharing bliss, I’m linking you to Adobe’s official recommendations for compressing .pdf files.
I’ve had the most success using “average downsampling to” and inputting 300 dpi. This seems to bring the file size down considerably while making a negligible impact on image quality.
If you’ve discovered a better way to shrink and send graphic files, brochures, non-vectorart please let us know! We’ll be happy to add it to our blog and give you mad props as well!
