How to make PAGES documents SMALLER but LOOK GOOD?

The 2 programs are serving 2 different purposes.

You are just looking at the results from FireWorks on screen, but are trying to print the pdf from Pages. Not the same thing really.

Do you understand the relationship between resolution and print quality?

File size = quality in bitmaps. Screen images are typically 72dpi whilst print images should be 300dpi.

If you are happy with the results from FireWorks, compress and reduce the graphics there first then place those into Pages. I think you will find whilst they look OK on screen, they too will print badly, being low resolution gifs and jpegs.

Explain in detail what exactly it is you are doing.

How did you install your printer on the Mac did you install any special printer driver for it?

I am guessing you are printing the pdf from Acrobat Reader in Windows 7, which will actually render the images to bitmap for the printer if there is a problem.

Did you do the same thing in OSX ie use Acrobat Reader to print from, or did you use Preview to open the file and print it?

Give a better idea of the complexity of the actual file and how you saved it when you went to pdf from Pages. There are 3 settings in Pages: Good, Better, Best when saving to pdf, each with progressively less compression. Which did you use?

Did you use a lot of the special effects in Pages such as transparency, shadows and reflections as these require a higher level of pdf to work, which Acrobat Reader may accept but your printer driver may not.

I'd appreciate help with this problem - today I had a 11 mg file which printed from Acrobat on WinXP but choked when I tried to print it from the MacBook.

The file was originally a Pages file with a mixture of graphics and text. I added a PDF which was created in Numbers. No calculations but lots of different background pictures in cells. I reduced all the pictures down to the size they need to be, printed to pdf and then added that single page file to the other pdf.

On the MacBook it printed one copy and then froze. After that I couldn't do anything with it. I moved it Windows and it printed 45 A5 booklets, double-sided and collated, from Acrobat Reader with no problem.

Can you help me work out what I could have done?

Many thanks

Deb

Try doing the same thing on the Mac, that is print from Acrobat Reader not from Preview which opens pdfs by default.

As I explained above, Acrobat will render the file to a print resolution file which any dumb printer can print from as it does not have to do any processing.

If it prints on the Mac using Acrobat Reader then we have isolated the problem to Preview/OSX/CUPS and issues with your printer.

I just created a two page document in Pages, with lots of formatting and photos. The file size is 43.9MB.

Pages has an option under the File menu which allows you to Reduce File Size. I tried it and the file reduced to 900K. The results looked very poor. Text was OK but the photos looked terrible.

There is also an option to send to Mail as a PDF under the Share menu. Looks horrible.

Tried saving the file using the Print command, and save as PDF (PDF-X didn't work). The photos were slightly fuzzed, but acceptable, but at 27.7MB, it was still too big.

OK, I thought, I have Adobe Acrobat Professional, so I opened this 27.7MBMB file there and used it's Reduce File Size feature. It reduced to 2.2MB, and the photos were OK but I still wanted the file size smaller.

But wait, one more thing: Opened the 27.7MB PDF file in Preview, Save As, PDF, Quartz Filter Reduce File Size, and it made a 1.1MB file that's acceptable.

So here's my suggestion:
Print your Pages file as a PDF, then open in Preview and Save As using the Reduce File Size Quartz filter.

When printing, I'd use the large original Pages file for the best quality.

Hope this helps.

There are several paths to a tight .pdf file of which the Quartz Filter is the smallest. You can see this result best by opening a vector .eps file in Preview and resaving it as a .pdf file. This can be opened in a text editor and checked against the alternate Unix pstopdf routine or distilled via Acrobat. The Quartz Filter result is much more terse than the others.

It is not however always the best, as when there are higher levels of graphics such as reflections, transparency and shadows, going via Acrobat Pro to a later version of .pdf will be the best.

Create a set of files using different effects and test them against the various .pdf creation methods.

Note which steps you have taken and recreate them as needed for the optimal result you wish to obtain.

OK - thanks for that suggestion. I have never installed the Acrobat Reader on the Mac - however, I am about to have to start using Adobe CS4 and will have access to Acrobat itself.

However, I love Pages, and invested personally in it to do things for work because it is quick and easy and versatile.

Deb