How can I decrease the size of PDF files?

[LABachlr]

What's the best way to decrease the size of PDF files. I scanned in photocopies of text and pics as "color pictures" with Acrobat 4.0, and had 4 to 5 pages per PDF file, and they came out to 34MB in size! I could not scan it in as less quality, because then it would look bad. I can import them into Photoshop and then paste them into one large jpg file, but is there a way to just decrease the size of the PDF file. And I mean dramatically decrease it, as the person who wants to send these out via email is on dial-up. Thanks.

[Jon_King]

The best way to reduce the filesize is to use text instead of one big image. It could be a tenth of the size it is now with text. Short of that, you will just have to play with the output quality/size to your best advantage as you are now doing.

[LABachlr]

OK. Thanks.

Do you mean scan it in as text? Or scan it in without the pics? Can't really scan it in without the pics because they are part of the photocopy. But I assume you mean scan it in as text. I did try that, but the pics looked really bad when I did that. Working on the JPG option right now. If you or anyone else has any other suggestions, please do tell. Thanks.

[kaled]

Simple solution - don't use PDF.

Consider the text and images as separate issues.
1) Use Photoshop (or whatever) to reduce image sizes. Assuming the images are photos rather than diagrams, this will require use of noise reduction filters and Gaussian blurring for best compression before saving as a jpg file.
2) Create your text as html and include your images.
3) Compile using the HTML help workshop (free MS download).
OR
Distribute as a self-extracting zip archive.

When scanning, OCR software should be able to create the text but it will need editing for errors and layout.

Using this method, you should be able to reduce the file size, depending on image quality required, to less than 1 MB.

Kaled.