Scan-to-PDF file size way too big

instead of selecting black and white, select text if you have that option

This worked well. In Image Capture, under "Kind", I changed to "Text" from "Black and White". This reduced file size about 80%.

Thanks

5 to 7 MB for a grayscale letter size image at 300 dpi is about the right size for high quality JPEG image, or an RGB image with medium compression. I know you said PDF, but there's no such thing as a PDF scan. The scan is the same as any other scan - a raster image - except it's embedded in a PDF container file on the fly.

It all depends on what what compression level you use for JPEG that determines how small the files will turn out. The higher the compression, the smaller the file. Getting 17 letter size pages at 300 dpi down to under 1 MB means they used very high compression. And most likely, as grayscale images. Which, if it's text only, you can actually get away with that and still get a readable document. You wouldn't want to do that to images.

Dan Hubbell wrote:

I'm trying to scan some ordinary 8.5" x 11" documents in black & white at 300dpi, per the recipient's requirements, but the resulting PDF file sizes are way too big to e-mail. The recipient (a goverment agency) says a typical 22-page PDF should come in under 2 MB. But heck, I scan one lousy page and it's anywhere from 5 MB to 7 MB.

I use an HP Photosmart C4580 and a MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard. I've tried scanning from within Preview, scanning via Image Capture, and using the HP Scan application. All the same. Whenever I try to reduce the file size pre- or post-scan, the image is unreadable. And it's not searchable text, so I don't think that's the problem.

Kurt Lang is right on the mark with his answer. I would add that most likely the agency you are dealing with is using Adobe Acrobat. Their PDFs would be comprised of text rather than images. A text based PDF is going to be quite a bit smaller than a PDF that is comprised of an image regardless of the compression used.

You also hit on the topic of your scans not being searchable text. It is not clear whether your recipient wants/needs a searchable text PDF. If they do want searchable text, then you will have to manually enter the text in a word processing application or use OCR software on your scanned images.

Try this...

Scan it.

Open in Preview.

Save as....

Choose Quartz filter - Black and White.

It helped me when I scanned with my HP and took it down to a manageable size that still looked good.

Another option is open ColorSync in your Utilities folder--> filter-->reduce fill size -->apply.