[CreativeSurfer]

I know Stuffit Standard will allow you to compress many files into one archive file, but is there any software that will allow you to compress individual files?

I teach part time and have scanned in some papers for my students into individual files. These came out to be 7 and 8 Megs each (about 20 pages in each document). I want to shrink each 7 or 8 Meg file down to about 1 to 2 megs. Is there something out there to do this?

Thanks!

[cpac]

Originally posted by CreativeSurfer:
I know Stuffit Standard will allow you to compress many files into one archive file, but is there any software that will allow you to compress individual files?

I teach part time and have scanned in some papers for my students into individual files. These came out to be 7 and 8 Megs each (about 20 pages in each document). I want to shrink each 7 or 8 Meg file down to about 1 to 2 megs. Is there something out there to do this?

Thanks!

What format are they in? (Stuffit can compress individual files, as can the Finder itself).

But if you've scanned papers, my guess is that they're in .tiff format, in which case, you can massively shrink them just by making them into .pdfs or .jpgs.

[CreativeSurfer]

they are .pdf files

[CreativeSurfer]

perhaps a better way to ask this is can I compress a pdf file and have it remain a pdf file with any software out there?

[f1000]

Originally posted by CreativeSurfer:
perhaps a better way to ask this is can I compress a pdf file and have it remain a pdf file with any software out there?

I use PdfCompress.

In your case, though, I would recommend that you also look into getting OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software.

[f1000]

I thought I should mention that Adobe Acrobat's Paper Capture Online feature uses OCR to convert image files into text pdf's.

[wataru]

Please please please do NOT hand out images of text to your students. I absolutely hate that. Even 1 or 2mb is way too much for a bunch of text. Do it right with OCR.

[CreativeSurfer]

PDFCompress really didn't compress them by much (not even a half megabyte). The Adobe Paper Capture seems to be available only as a plug in for Acrobat 5.0 and I have 6.0. When I scanned the images at a relative's house they were converted automatically (via the scanning software - its an HP scanner) into a PDF file (so they aren't image files, or at least shouldn't be), I was just shocked that a 17 page pdf is 10 Meg. This never happened before when I scanned into PDF at a grad school I attended a few years ago. I don't want to give large files either, but apparantly I have no choice at the moment.

Thanks for your help.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by wataru:
Please please please do NOT hand out images of text to your students. I absolutely hate that. Even 1 or 2mb is way too much for a bunch of text. Do it right with OCR.

I can't agree more. My GF downloads 3-4MB PDF files only to find that they are simply BIG scans of some tiny little one page article.

The whole thing could have been done for 1/50th of that size.

[f1000]

Originally posted by CreativeSurfer:
When I scanned the images at a relative's house they were converted automatically (via the scanning software - its an HP scanner) into a PDF file (so they aren't image files, or at least shouldn't be), I was just shocked that a 17 page pdf is 10 Meg.

PDF's can contain images, and I suspect that each of your "pages" is in fact a huge image file and not an editable text file. If you can't select any of the text in your file, then it's an image (even if your file has a .pdf suffix).

[CreativeSurfer]

I know I selected the option to have it scanned as editable text, but perhaps its outdated software or something.