So does anyone know a better way of...
designbyjez (75 points) | Tue, 2008-01-22 16:07So heres the situation...
My boss has created a 63 page powerpoint presentation which I have had to do final design tweaks to....I say design but as we all know "powerpoint is not a design application!' but anyway we have this presentation which is presented and then the client asks for a copy as a PDF.
This is fine - i click make PDF button in Powerpoint and it makes a PDF at 15MB which is too large to email form our system and will probably piss our new client off at the other end as they can't receive large attachments. It has to be emailed so sending via ftp or ISDN is ruled out.
I use PDF shrink application to try and the PDF down to a decent size. I get it down to 6MB but the image quality is shite. Boss not happy as this is our chance to show off some of our work to new client.
I can't think of any other way of getting round this other than rebuilding the whole thing in Indesign. It takes 2hrs of unpaid time but I end up with a 2.4MB PDF with almost perfect image quality.
My conclusion (which I suspected all along) is that Powerpoint only good for one thing- dull presentations. please can everyone just back me up so i can help explain the 2 hours of unpaid work time that i need to explain
designbyjez
It's a workaround, but sendspace.com will temporarily host larger image file for you for free. I think the free account has 200MB limit or something like that.
Are your background images in the ppt file tifs or jpgs? You'll get a smaller output file with jpg backgrounds. Are there any unecessary graphics? Did you use master pages? These things can help you get the file size down.
YOu could also output a ps file and then print it to acrobat/distiller as x-1a format.
Lastly, you can export each page as a jpg file and then place them in ID, and then output a pdf/x1-a directly from ID.
The last design group I was a part of always designed the ppt files in ID and then just exported jpgs. More flexible that way. And you're right, Powerpoint is not a design application. :)
----
Powerpoint is not a design application
My latest web design work
----
The Salon Design Tech