scanning - files too large!

[ponywings]

MAC USERS!  I think I have found a solution!  When you save the document and specify the file type as pdf, if you have the option to save as "pdf image over text" instead of "pdf image only", the size of the file is much smaller.  I scanned an 8 page document as "image" and it was roughly 20 mb, but I rescanned the same document as "image over text" and the result was 5.1 mb.

[afauci]

Thanks for this...I have bought a cannon because it has fax and ADF so a bit more functionality - I do have some comments here though

Although 5.1mb is way better than 20 it is still way too high. - how did the document look on image over text

I have found that the cannon has the same issue here in the docs being too big - not as bad as the hp though - so I believe this is also a MAC problem but can not be sure

Here are my solutions

1 - Adobe Acrobat says they have a way to reduce document size...I tried the free trial software (I had to use windows) and although it did work I could not find how to do a better job..it reduced but not by much - and they do not offer tech support for free trial so if yo think that this is a long term solution it is going to cost between 200 and 500 bucks

2 - there are document "shrink" software but i am sure someone addressed this in the chain - i have not tried

3 - use Colorsync - you can make a custom tab to reduce some things - then open your pdf in preview and save as - and use your custom in quartz filter - I found this on the web - and it is explained better

I have been using this and it does reduce a lot..I have decided to live with this and put my documents only on my back up hard drive - it is cheaper to buy memory than software

i hope this helps 

[Joeley]

The main culprit to the bulky files is the underlying OCR/text that is added when scanning.

I doubt if Adobe Acrobat "document shrinking" option would help, unless it can strip out the OCR/text elements which I suspect to be highly unlikely.

If you have an option, scan to image only. If it's still bulky, as it was for me using the printer-supplied software package, it may be because the OCR/text was included in the PDF anyway, despite your choice of image only.

That's why I found the solution of using older software (at least for my PC) was the best option.

[ponywings]

I looked at both side by side.  Unless you get out a magnifying glass, they look pretty much the same.

[Joeley]

By the way, you can tell that a document has OCR/text component if you can run a search on the text contained therein. Also using selection tools will reveal that indivual letters and words are selectable.

[shaulbehr]

Wooohooo!

I have the answer!

Scan to black and white instead of color!

I scanned a small document in color, and it came out at 257 KB.  The very same document scanned in B&W came out at 19 KB!

Of course, this assumes you don't need the color; if you need your scanned docs to preserve the color, then that's the price you pay; even the background off-white of your paper has to be stored somewhere.  But it is indeed fascinating to realize that scanning a document in color causes more than a tenfold leap in file size!

🙂

Shaul

[afauci]

Shaulbehr

Although I already bought a new scanner (cannon) I am actually having the same problem BUT MUCH LESS and have been able to manage

But thank you very much for this answer I am going to also try on my cannon 

It would be helpful if you told people how to actually scan in black and white

[Joeley]

I'm glad that worked for you, but in my experience, it's not the image setting that produced the overly large file, it was the fact that OCR/searchable text was embedded in the PDF, counter to the settings chosen. Refer to previous postings to see how this was corrected in my case.

For readable text at the smallest PDF size, I tend to use 200 dpi black and white or the slightly larger 100 dpi greyscale settings, if color is not a factor.

[shaulbehr]

Joeley - that color scan was achieved using plain (not searchable) PDF.  Still an order of magnitude bigger than the B&W.

[Dennis_Nichols]

Scan from the desktop, not from the scanner's hardware menu. I have found that initiating the scan from the AiO printer produces a file 50 times the size I get when scananing from the HP Device Manager software.