Compressing Images

[Pagemakers]

The PC version has an option to compress images in documents. I used this feature all the time but cannot find it in the Mac 2008 version.

Is there such a feature and if not, why?

 

[JE McGimpsey]

The PC version has an option to compress images in documents. I used this
feature all the time but cannot find it in the Mac 2008 version. <br><br>Is
there such a feature
No.

and if not, why?

Because it wasn't implemented.

Send feedback to MacBU via Help/Send Feedback

 

[John McGhie]

Yes, and it's built-in.

To expand on what J.E. said: there is no "function" provided to the user to
compress images in Mac Office 2008, because it's not needed. Mac Office has
no other way to store images except "compressed".

However, if you are looking for the PC's "Compress these images for
emailing" feature, J.E. Is quite correct, we don't have that

Cheers

The PC version has an option to compress images in documents. I used this
feature all the time but cannot find it in the Mac 2008 version.

Is there such a feature and if not, why?

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Pagemakers]

So are you saying if I have a 1GB photo in a word document and then print the document to PDF. The Mac and PC file sizes will be the same even if I compress the image on the PC and not on the Mac?

 

[John McGhie]

That's not what I said

I have no idea what will happen in PDF. Word doesn't do PDF on the Mac,
that's handled by Mac OS X or directly by Adobe Acrobat.

You would have to ask Apple or Adobe what would happen in PDF.

Generally, the answer will depend on what image format you're using. RAW,
TIFF and BMP will compress. GIF, PNG and JPEG are already compressed: they
can't be made any smaller.

I would gently suggest that if you are handling 1GB photos, Word is not your
weapon. If you were working for me and you put 1 GB pictures in my
documents, I would come looking for you, and it would NOT be to give you a
pay rise

Cheers

So are you saying if I have a 1GB photo in a word document and then print the
document to PDF. The Mac and PC file sizes will be the same even if I
compress the image on the PC and not on the Mac?

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Pagemakers]

John I agree with you 100% (BTW I meant 1MB not 1 GB).

I will explain further.

I run a website for a corporate company. On a regular basis they send me word documents. I convert them to PDF and upload them to the website.

Despite my continual requests, many of the documents contain large graphic files. In word for PC that is not a problem. I click a single button called 'compress images' and their file size is optimised for the web.

However on the Mac edition there is no such option in word to compress images.

So I go back to my original question.... Why is this feature not in the Mac edition of office?

Is there another simple way within word I can compress the images?

Re you comment above JPGs can be made smaller in the PC version of word. This can be proven by inserting a document into word and then printing to PDF. Then compress the image and print again and the resulting file is much smaller.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

See what happens if you use File | Print, and on the Save as PDF button,
it has a dropdown that offers Compress PDF.

 

[Pagemakers]

Daiya I do not see a Compress PDF option at all.

Word 2008 and Leopard.

 

[Michel Bintener]

Compress PDF is an option that is available in Tiger; it's no longer present
in Leopard. In Leopard, save your document as a regular PDF file, then use
Spotlight to find an application called ColorSync Utility. Drag the PDF file
onto the icon in the dock, then select "Reduce File Size" from the Filter
dropdown button at the bottom of the screen. Save the file, and the size of
the PDF file should have decreased.

Daiya I do not see a Compress PDF option at all.

Word 2008 and Leopard.

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)

*** Please always reply to the newsgroup. ***

 

[Pagemakers]

WOW!!

It reduced from 14MB to 40K

 

[William Smith]

Compress PDF is an option that is available in Tiger; it's no longer present
in Leopard. In Leopard, save your document as a regular PDF file, then use
Spotlight to find an application called ColorSync Utility. Drag the PDF file
onto the icon in the dock, then select "Reduce File Size" from the Filter
dropdown button at the bottom of the screen. Save the file, and the size of
the PDF file should have decreased.

Fantastic idea! I wonder if the new Automator actions could facilitate
this. I do see in Automator (when I sort by Applications) PDF -->
Compress Images in PDF Document.

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>

 

[Pagemakers]

Any idea why the compress PDF option was removed from Tiger. I would have thought it would been a great feature.

 

[Pagemakers]

Somebody else on another forum has just pointed out another way...

When printing choose PDF &gt; Open PDF in Preview. The in Preview, choose File &gt; Save As. Set Format as PDF and Quart Filter as Reduce File Size.

 

[John McGhie]

Sorry to take so long to get back to you ‹ we've been a tad busy

Despite my continual requests, many of the documents contain large graphic
files. In word for PC that is not a problem. I click a single button called
'compress images' and their file size is optimised for the web.

Ah hah! Yes, that button on the PC is "re-sampling" the image, not
technically the same operation as "compressing". It reduces the pixel count
and (I can't remember: it may drop the colour table down too...)

However on the Mac edition there is no such option in word to compress images.

So I go back to my original question.... Why is this feature not in the Mac
edition of office?

Michel to the rescue: "Because on the Mac it's not needed" There are
any number of image-processing applications available for the Mac that do
this for you very well. Mac BU I guess chose not to spend precious coding
time on replicating this function.

Re you comment above JPGs can be made smaller in the PC version of word. This
can be proven by inserting a document into word and then printing to PDF.
Then compress the image and print again and the resulting file is much
smaller.

Yeah, but it's being done by removing pixels from the image: I
misunderstood, I was not aware that you could tolerate a quality loss. Of
course, for website use, you not only can, you should!

Cheers

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Pagemakers]

Thanks for your reply.

Sadly, the people who send me word documents for conversion to PDF do not listen when I request that the images files should be small. Many times they send files that contain 1-2MB images. When converted to PDF the file size can be huge.

With word on a PC I simple click a button to compress all images before printing to PDF and the results are quite acceptable.

However word on a Mac does not have this option and so it would create huge PDF files.

A few users above have offered workarounds but this involved a cumbersome process.

Tiger had a print to compressed PDF option which for some reason was removed from Leopard. However, a user form another forum gave me a link to a app on the Apple website that re-instates the compressed PDF option and once again I can quickly print small PDF files once again.

Still, not sure why Word for Apple does not have this feature though.