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WordPerfect Office Tips & Tricks

Optimizing PDF files in WordPerfect® 11

WordPerfect® 11 lets you optimize your PDF files to balance file size and quality. Depending on how a PDF file will be used — whether it will be printed, edited, or viewed online — you can use a preset PDF style for optimum results. Preset PDF styles combine different compatibility, font, compression, and other settings, which are explained in Understanding PDF settings.

It is a good idea to use preset PDF styles if you are new to creating PDF files. You can also start with a preset style and then customize some of the settings to fully suit your needs.

To optimize a PDF file by using a preset PDF style

1. Click File, Publish to PDF.
2. Click the General tab.

3. In the Export range area, enable the Full document option.
If you prefer, you can include only selected text, the current page, or a range of pages from the document in the PDF file.
4. From the PDF style list box, choose one of the following PDF styles:

PDF for document distribution — creates a PDF file that can be printed on a laser or desktop printer
PDF for the Web — creates a PDF file intended for online viewing, such as a PDF file to be distributed by e-mail or published to the World Wide Web. Of the three PDF styles, this style produces the smallest file size and speeds up the display of the PDF file.
PDF for editing — creates a high-quality PDF file intended to be sent to a printer or digital copier. This style makes the PDF file fully editable, but produces the largest file size.

5. Choose the drive and folder where you want to save the file.
6. Type a filename in the Filename box.
7. Click Save.

Understanding PDF Settings

Compatibility

You can make sure that your files are compatible with the version of Adobe® Acrobat® or Adobe® Acrobat® Reader® that they will be viewed in. The available compatibility settings are Acrobat 3.0, Acrobat 4.0, and Acrobat 5.0. These settings can be accessed through the General tab of the Publish to PDF dialog box (see image above). The Acrobat 5.0 compatibility setting may cause problems when the file is viewed in earlier versions of Acrobat.

Compression

If your document contains a lot of bitmaps, compression settings are very important for achieving good image quality at a manageable file size. You can choose from the following bitmap compression settings:

None — no compression of bitmaps. It produces bigger files.
LZW — lossless compression that provides very good image quality, but results in bigger files than the other compression techniques
JPEG — lossy compression suitable for photo images. It removes some image information and significantly reduces the file size. The JPEG compression has an image quality scale ranging from 2 (high) to 255 (low). Settings in the high to medium quality range (2-125) do not noticeably affect image quality but produce bigger files than settings in the low quality range.
ZIP — lossless compression suitable for screen captures and simple images. It considerably reduces the file size.

By default, all text and line art (vector graphics) are compressed to reduce the file size with no noticeable effect on quality. Disabling the Compress text and line art option increases the file size.

You can access compression settings from the Objects tab of the Publish to PDF dialog box.

Text and fonts

Text and font settings, like compression settings, can be accessed from the Objects tab (see image above).You can embed fonts to ensure that all text appears in its original font in the PDF file. By default, fonts are embedded when using the PDF for document distribution and PDF for editing PDF preset styles.

You can embed all fonts in a document or the base 14 fonts, which are available on all PostScript devices, and you can convert TrueType fonts to Type 1 fonts. However, embedding and converting fonts increase the file size if your document contains multiple fonts. To control the file size, you can embed only subsets of the fonts by setting a subset threshold. If the threshold is 80% (as shown in the example above) and fewer than 80% of all font characters are used in a document, WordPerfect embeds only these characters.

You can also eliminate font variances on different computers by exporting text as curves. This method increases the complexity of the file and can increase file size, so use it only if your document contains unusual text characters.

By default, all PDF files are saved as binary files. You can also save PDF files as ASCII 85 files if you want to edit the file in a text editor or ensure the file is displayed correctly on all platforms. However, the ASCII encoding format significantly increases the file size.

Hyperlinks and bookmarks

Hyperlinks are useful for jumping to other Web pages or to Internet URLs. Bookmarks are used to link to specific areas in a PDF file, making the file easier to navigate. Hyperlinks and bookmarks have very little effect on the file size.

Document tab

Use the Document tab to include hyperlinks and bookmarks in the PDF file.

Advanced settings

Color settings control how color appears in the PDF files, and they affect the file size. The available color settings are

RGB —changes all text and images to the RGB color mode. This setting is suitable for PDF files to be viewed online.
CMYK — changes all text and images to the CMYK color mode. This setting is suitable for PDF files to be printed by a commercial printer. Avoid using it in other cases since it produces the biggest file size of all color settings.
Grayscale — changes text and images to the grayscale color mode. Use this setting if your document contains color images but the PDF file will be printed to a black-and-white printer. This setting produces the smallest file size.
Native — preserves the color mode of all text and images so that they can be displayed exactly as they appear in the document and edited

The Optimize for Web option allows a PDF file to be downloaded one page at a time, making it easier and faster to view the PDF file on the Web.