[scribus] Can scribus page/canvas default resolution be lowered?

[Anders Källström]

On 12/13/2010 03:20 PM, Ian "Witty" Whitfield wrote:
> randy pare wrote..
>> Once again, forgive my intrusion - this stuff is hard to learn.
>> Okay, the document I am attempting to create, using scribus, is NOT 
>> intended for printing. It will be a PDF shared over the web [an 
>> e-zine]. Until now I have always done my layouts using MS Word and am 
>> trying to learn DTP software so I can get more creative with my layouts.
>> All that being said, I must also add that the graphics I use for my 
>> zine are all simple web friendly jpegs. When loading them into 
>> scribus, unlike MS Word, they are reduced to illegible, blurry 
>> thumbnails. I can only assume this is because the default setting of 
>> the page/or canvas [to use an art program term] is very high. For 
>> example, the exact same simple jpegs, when added to an MS Word doc - 
>> appear larger, are not blurry and can be converted to a PDF for web 
>> quite simply. Because MS Word doesn't expect the images to be hi rez.
>> What I would like to know - is it possible for the page resolution - 
>> the working area itself - to be lowered to web specs? Or should I be 
>> searching for other software? I have read instructions about scaling 
>> images for export etc etc... none of this is helpful if the environ 
>> they are layed out in is too high a rez to begin with.
>> Thank you for your time
>
> Scribus' PDF is optimized for print shops and it takes pains to ensure 
> that the printed output will look identical on different printing 
> presses. The price for this consistency is a _file size_ several times 
> larger than straight-forward PDF would be. This tip shows a way to 
> reduce the file size so you can put the PDF file on the Web or even 
> distribute it by eMail.
>
> I edit and lay out a Journal that, being mostly distributed via eMail 
> and on the Web, *must*be as compact as possible. Since the Scribus 
> options for minimizing the size, (subsetting fonts and downsampling 
> images), do not meet that requirement, I looked for a route to go 
> through PostScript and back to PDF that would give better compression, 
> and the following, from the Scribus Wiki does a surprisingly good job:
>
>   1.
>
>      Export from Scribus as PDF (1.3 or 1.4), embedding all fonts, no
>      font subsetting, no image subsampling → PDF File [6 MB]
>
>   2.
>
>      Convert to PS using `pdftops -level3' → PDF File.ps [huge – over
>      50Mb]
>      [cd to directory
>
>      pdftops -level3 PDF File.pdf File.ps]
>
>   3.
>
>      Convert back to PDF with 'ps2pdf13 ' and 'Ghostscript' (subsetting
>      fonts, subsampling images) → PDF File_compact.pdf [1.5MB].
>      [ps2pdf13 File.ps PDF File.pdf]
>
> Hope this helps for you as well as it does for me.
>
> Ian Whitfield

I had the same problem, produced a pdf (using scribus) to be printed. 
Pictures a mix of jpg's and png's. The pdf  was around 21MB, embedding 
all fonts, no subsetting etc...
Now this pdf has to be available from a webpage as well. The most 
efficient way to shrink it that I found was the following:

1. print the Scribus-pdf to a  ps-file from Adobe Reader (I work in 
Ubunto 10.4).  I chose custom print, a4 size, no scaling, autorotate and 
center.
This gets rid of the crop marks etc used in the print-version.

2. convert the ps-file back to pdf using
ps2pdf -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen

This gives a pdf where fonts are subsetted, pictures downsampled etc..

In this particular case the original pdf-file was 21MB, the ps-file 
generated about 50MB and the final pdf only 280 KB!

-- 
/Anders K
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