Before I sat down to write this article, I thought it would be a good idea to fuel my neurons with a healthy breakfast – soft-boiled egg and soldiers. For the less knowledgeable, the soldiers are nothing more than toasted bread cut up in fingers which you then dip into the soft egg. To cut a long story short, I constantly manage to overcook the egg to the point at which it graduates to becoming a hard-boiled egg, which adds to my frustration in the fact that eggs should be the simplest cooking experience in the breakfast recipe book. I’m sure that by now you’re wondering about the point to all this egg-rant. Well, similarly to cooking a simple egg, shouldn’t creating a PDF also be a simple, mindless process?
Dialing-in the right settings for the required result
Following some basic research, I soon learned that there is an art to cooking the perfect eggs. Hard-boiled, soft-boiled, poached, steamed, over-easy; a few examples from over 100 different ways to cook the same ingredient, mostly differentiated by changes in timing and heat settings.
The concept also applies to creating a PDF. Shouldn’t it also be as simple as just feeding your document to your PDF creation tool? One quickly realises that although there are standard settings for creating a PDF file, there is also an array of other configurations to tweak the resultant PDF based on its intended use. When one considers that the basis of the PDF format is distribution, one must also determine how this distribution will occur, and what will be expected from the PDF file. Following are a few examples of distribution methods and document use:
- Internet download
- Email newsletter
- Detailed product documentation burned to CD
- Collection of images to be printed as high-quality adverts
- Quarterly financial report
For each of the above examples, the file-size of the PDF is critical to the efficiency of its distribution. If we create a PDF file that will be sent via Email, we have to ensure the PDF’s size remains low enough for the recipient to quickly open it as an attachment. If this PDF file contains images, they cannot be high-resolution poster-size images because the person trying to download the attachment will be instantly taken back to the days when squealing dial-up modems allowed us to finish dinner before being able to read an Email.
Image compression and downsampling
To strike the right balance of image size and quality level, we must explore the options available during the PDF creation process to optimize the document’s images. Following are the two main settings that come into play when adjusting the final output size:
- Image Compression: the objective of compression is to reduce the size of the image by removing redundant data from the image structure. Compression is subcategorized into two further groups – lossy and lossless. Lossy compression results in a reduced quality of the compressed image, sometimes creating noticeable visual artifacts like pixelation Lossless compression is the chosen method for archival purposes such as photography, and uses special data compression algorithms to reconstruct the original image from the compressed data.
- Image Downsampling: an image is downsampled when its physical width and height dimensions are reduced. This is achieved by deleting entire rows and columns of pixels resulting in a smaller image. Downsampling is a lossy process because discarded pixels can never be recovered.
PDF creation settings
Many of the PDF creation tools available include custom settings that specify how thePDF creation process will treat the file’s images.
PrimoPDF features a Custom Creation Profile that gives you full control over the size and quality of your document’s images with the following settings:
fig.01 - Image settings in PrimoPDFDownsampling:
- Don’t Downsample – This option disables image downsampling in the created PDFdocument to produce the highest quality of output possible. It is recommended to select this option if the PDF will be used for printing to a commercial quality printer.
- Average – With this option selected, neighboring pixels in an image are averaged, and pixels of similar value are replaced with the calculation of their average pixel color. Averaging generally produces good quality results and is suitable for printing to most home and office printers.
- Subsample – This option configures PrimoPDF to take a pixel from a sampled area and replace the entire area with the selected pixel. Subsampling produces smaller file sizes and PDF creation is faster, however a decrease in visual quality may be noticed.
- Bicubic – When selected, PrimoPDF uses bicubic interpolation to generate new pixel values. This is achieved by using a special averaging calculation to retain the highest possible quality, and can create better quality results than the other sampling methods. This however slows down the PDF creation process since the calculations are more complex to compute.
- Downsampling Threshold – The Color, Grayscale, and Mono categories in the Custom Creation Profile all allow the user to downsample images above a predetermined threshold. This assists in reducing the PDF file size since any image above the specified resolution will automatically be downsampled to the configured value.
Compression (for monochrome images):
- CCIT (International Coordinating Committee for Telephony and Fax Encoding) — A lossless compression method that uses standard fax compression and only applies to ‘black & white’ images.
- Flate Encode — Uses the ZIP compression method to reduce the image size without affecting quality.
- Run Length Encode — Particularly effective on files that contain many long runs of the same bit, value, or character. This method is primarily used on binary files.
Nitro Pro and Nitro Reader also allow you to tune the quality and size of your document’s images. The Create PDF From File dialog offers compression and downsampling settings that can be tweaked separately for color, greyscale, and monochrome images:
fig.02 - Image settings in Nitro ReaderDownsampling:
- Images can be downsampled anywhere between 1200 to 72 dpi (dots per inch).
Compression:
- ZIP: a popular lossless compression method most effective on images with predominantly repeating colors or patterns such as illustrations created with paint programs.
- JPEG: a lossy compression algorithm aimed at reducing the file-size of photographic images without losing any obvious visual quality. JPEG achieves higher compression than ZIP by eliminating data from the image, and is therefore a lossy compression method.
- JPEG2000: originally designed to supersede the JPEG method, JPEG2000 provides both lossy and lossless compression in the same algorithm and is known to create circular artifacts near the corners of an image.
- Automatic: the best compression method is selected to suit the majority of images within the document.
The perfect recipe
A lot of information can be found on selecting the perfect compression algorithm for a specific type of image; however there is no master-formula that one can apply to all the different possible scenarios. Just as I’ve learned that cooking the perfect egg requires lots of trial and error, the same concept also applies to finding the right compression method for different types of images. Perhaps the most misleading characteristic in anyPDF file is that most its images are likely to be different in nature; making it hard to predict the compression method for high-quality results. The best advice I can give is to determine what will be expected from your PDF file and then try different compression or downsampling methods based on its final use. If you will be carrying your PDF file to a printing press on a USB stick then you might not even need to apply any compression at all, to keep your images at the highest level of quality. On the other hand, if you wish to create a financial report with charts and graphs, then JPEG compression might be your best bet to retain quality at a lower file size that might be more suitable as an Email attachment.
So, it would be great to hear your stories about how you like your eggs, and how you like your PDFs. Did you find a one-stop method for optimizing your images? Tell me about the types of images you use regularly, and whether or not you use compression or downsampling.
Related posts
- No related posts.
A great article for tweaking PDF docs!
ReadWriteWeb
People use Facebook a lot already, but the addition of the new Groups feature today will lead them to use it even more - and in different ways.
Facebook's addition of a far more sophisticated Groups feature than was previously available will increase the time users spend on the site, the number of different ways they use Facebook and the importance of the already very important social network in the lives of those who use it. There are three thematic reasons why this is true: the new feature offers an improved signal-to-noise ratio, increased context for communication and a big improvement in user privacy, thanks to respect for the contextual integrity of conversations. The new feature runs some risk of being too complicated, though.
Sponsor
Signal to Noise
The creation of groups in any set of subscriptions, and that's what your Facebook social graph is thanks to the News Feed, is a key way to offer users an option to change the signal to noise ratio of what they are reading moment-by-moment.
Users will continue to spend some time in the bulk Live Feed, seeing the most recent updates from everyone they have added as a friend. They will spend some time in the News Feed, seeing general interest updates from the people they have interacted with the most. And now they will spend some time in their Groups pages, where they know what to expect and where there is a social price paid for posting "off topic" content.
Focused conversations and collaboration in Groups will differ substantially from the old Facebook experience of undifferentiated broadcast. People will start using Facebook for new things - planning events, for example. It's not just a social network anymore. Now it's also a newsgroup, a planning tool and more.
Note that this is very different from the creation of Lists on Twitter. That organizes all statements shared by particular users grouped by a topic, but not necessarily only discussing that topic. The signal to noise ratio will be far superior on Facebook, but the discovery of serendipitous content relevant only because of who it was shared by - that will be better on Twitter, or on the Facebook lists that the company says only 5% of users took the time to create. There are some things that Twitter lists will still be better at doing than Facebook Groups.
Context
Could Groups Prove Malcom Gladwell Wrong?
Facebook and Twitter don't have the power to change the world, says notable author Malcolm Gladwell, whose book "The Tipping Point" detailed how little things can make a big difference. He made this controversial, counter-intuitive argument via an article published in The New Yorker titled "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not be Twittered."
ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez summarized Gladwell's argument here last week. The gist of it was that social networks lead to weak ties between people and weak ties don't support taking the kinds of high-risk actions that big social change requires. That argument makes for a great debate, but consider the subsequent addition of Facebook Groups as a collaboration tool. It goes beyond the weak ties and offers solid, but social, functionality. Could Groups be Facebook's most effective social change tool yet? It's easy to focus on the promotional implications of social media, but what about increased organizational capacity thanks to tools like this?
A message posted to Facebook in general has only your friendship as context, and as Mark Zuckerberg said today - there's no clear definition of what it means to be friends with someone on Facebook.
In the new Groups, messages will be written and read with several other sources of context in mind: the topic of the group, who invited a user to the group and related content in the form of shared editable documents and group chats.
A simple example: people who do work in complicated fields will now be able to post more high-context content to topical Groups than they may have felt comfortable sharing in their bulk News Feed made up of non-specialist friends and family. All the sudden, Facebook is a place to have deep topical conversations, not just lowest-common-denominator bulk public conversations. That's a dramatic shift.
Privacy
We, and others, have been saying for 18 months that a more contemporary understanding of privacy would lead Facebook not just to respect the public/private wishes of users, but also to make it easy for the contextual integrity of communication to be respected. No photos from Friday night at the bar being shown in Church, and no audio tape of your prayers at Church being played for laughs from your friends at the bar again later. Yet that's what Facebook has pushed people towards - all content being publicly visible and shared with all people, regardless of the context. Until today.
Zuckerberg spoke to this concern extensively today. The groups feature, at least in theory, will let you talk with friends about what's relevant to the groups they belong to, and not about the things that aren't relevant to them. That's a good privacy move, but it's also something Zuckerberg rightly says will encourage people to post more content.The new feature does add another layer of complication to the whole Facebook experience.
"The groups work sounded promising, if they can offer something that satisfies the same needs as the little mailing lists that people either formally or informally create now," says social network data analyst Pete Warden.
"I'm still worried that they're taking the same approach to privacy that Microsoft takes to security. Their space-shuttle control panel approach is like having lots of noisy popups, people are confused and learn to ignore them. Far better if you can have a really simple story. Even with something as simple as open/closed for groups, it's still too much for most people. Look at the whole 'journolist' scandal - participants obviously weren't thinking through the fact that their messages were ending up in hundreds of people's inboxes. Most people don't have developed the 'street-smarts' to navigate even comparatively simple privacy models. I still regularly reply to Twitter DMs on my phone, and forget to add 'd' to the start of the message, sending the reply to my whole world."
I'm not so sure. I think people will be able to handle these changes to Facebook. The interface may require a little more work, but it's pretty good so far. I think people will find it useful, as a sub-stream of their bulk News Feed. I think they will find the signal-to-noise, context and privacy gains compelling enough that it will lead people to use Facebook more, and in new ways.
DiscussSent with Reeder
via army.mil
The goal is setting a writing environment around Dropbox in such a way that the writer should be able to write anywhere and using any available gadgets while still being able to keep track of his/her work. I could, for example, start writing a piece at my home computer in the morning, then while I’m on the road I could open my iPhone and pick up my writing where I left off. I could easily continue using another computer and the writing is always there, neatly organized amongst other pieces.
There are several routes one might take. Here are five tips that I discovered after trying to customize Dropbox for my own writing life.
via makeuseof.com
After the Sisters of St. Joseph bought the property in 1941, they used the building as a kindergarten and residence.
Older St. Augustinians remember their days in the kindergarten in the above-ground basement where Sister Patrick Theresa was the legendary longtime kindergarten teacher. She was active in both a prison ministry and hospital ministry and was known for walking everywhere.
Villa Flora is located in one of the most historic parts of St. Augustine. Property next to the Villa and directly across the street from the mother house of St. Joseph was the site of the early Spanish chapel Nuestra Senora de la Soledad, said Sister Mary Christine Zimorski, who oversees Villa Flora. The chapel included a small hospital and a small cemetery.
"Remains have been found in the cemetery," Zimorski said, pointing to the green space next to Villa Flora. During one dig in the area, buttons from British soldiers' tunics were found.
via staugustine.com
Get the great benefits of Skype on your mobile phone
Skype for Symbian
Learn more View all handsets(3G and WiFi)All Nokia handsets
- 5320
- 5530
- 5800
- 6210 Navigator
- 6220 Classic
- E51
- E63
- E66
- E71
- E72
- E90
- N78
- N79
- N81
- N81 8GB
- N82
- N85
- N95
- N95 8GB
- N96
- N97
- N97 mini
- X6
Looking to use Skype on an Android phone over a 3G connection? Get Skype mobile™
Skype Lite and Skype for Windows Mobile are no longer available. Find out why
via skype.com
Now all we need is the OS upgrade for the iPad. Also, can't wait to see what Facebook and Skype have up their sleeve!
Macworld
Both the iPad and iPhone versions of the PDF file viewing app from Good.iWare now let users mark up PDFs with highlights and notes. 
Sent with Reeder
148AppsiPhone App Reviews, iPhone Game Reviews, and iPhone News :: 148Apps
Editing your Wordpress blog with Wordpress for iOS has long been a frustrating experience, and not only because it has a screen that is a fraction of the standard size of a computer screen. The problem was that the app was missing some key features that make the desktop version so wonderful.
One of the huge additions to Wordpress 2.6 is the ability to upload video, something that iPhone 4 users with their lovely new video recorders have been dying to get to. With 2.6, you can record, upload, attach, and play videos with the app. In addition to video, the Wordpress team has updated the Media Library to function more like the web version, meaning that you can now see the media object’s file size, dimensions, and are able to insert media items above or below content.
The other huge issue with Wordpress for iOS was a sloppy handling of drafts. With 2.6, Wordpress now saves drafts locally, on your device, before shooting them out to the internet, potentially saving you much embarassment. Only when Wordpress verifies that the post has actually made it, and then checks again just to make sure, will the app clear the local draft off your iPhone. If you still mess the process up somehow, the new version supports autosave, and has an easily navigable screen that will help you get your previous post back.
So for all you Wordpress junkies out there, be sure to update or pick up your free copy of Wordpress today. If you’ve tried Wordpress for iOS before but couldn’t figure out how to set up your blog (no shame in that, it was complicated), the new update streamlines that process too, so hop on board.
FREE!
+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2009-10-29 :: Category: Social Networking
Released: 2009-10-29 :: Category: Social Networking
[Source: ReadWriteWeb]
[ Wordpress For iOS Update Makes Blogging Easier is a post from 148Apps ]
Sent with Reeder