Distiller 4.05 files in XP much smaller than 98SE

[Michael H Lane]

Distiller 4.05 files created in Windows XP (Pentium IV) are much smaller than those created in Windows 98SE (Pentium II). I usually create pdf documents (that contain several pictures) using PDFWriter 4.05. However, for customers that have high quality printers, I create the same documents using Distiller 4.05. In windows 98, the distiller file is much larger than the PDFWriter version of the same file. I am assuming that EXTRA information and data is added to the Distiller version of the output.

However, I upgraded my computer, and am now using XP Professional. Now the same file created in Distiller is much SMALLER than the PDFWriter version. The distiller settings are identical on both computers.

Am I correct in assuming that the Distiller version is higher quality than PDFWriter? Is there something missing from the Distiller file created in Windows XP? Is Windows XP and/or Pentium IV causing a more compact file to be created?

[De Siem]

Distiller is better than pdfwriter, always has been alwasy will be.

The other difference between win 98 and XP would be the used ps printer driver. They are not the same on both platforms, also i suspect you were using an old driver on win98.

[George Johnson]

There are many settings in Distiller that can have a profound effect on the size of the PDF. It's impossible to explain the differences you're seeing without examining the two PDFs. Knowing how Distiller is set up on each system would be helpful as well. It could be that fonts are embedded in one but not the other, images are compressed differently, etc.

George

[Michael H Lane]

Maybe I can explain better using figures:
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File sizes (approximate):
Distiller

* Windows 98: 1.1 meg
* Windows XP: 280 kb
PDFWriter

* Windows 98: 480 kb
* Windows XP: 480 kb
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Creating a certain document containing photographs using PDFWriter in either Windows 98 or Windows XP both create a pdf file of about 480kb. Creating the same document using distiller in Windows 98 creates a pdf file about 1.1meg--this is expected, since it is a higher quality file. However, creating the same file using distiller in Windows XP creates a file size of about 280kb?!? I am curious why distiller in XP is creating a file much smaller than PDFWriter. I am using the latest universal ps printer driver that I downloaded from Adobe (for XP).

Sometime in the past I did have a postscript printer installed on the Win98 machine--a few years prior to installing Acrobat/distiller. Could this be the cause of a larger distiller file in my Win98 machine? Is it possible that the much smaller XP distiller file is higher quality than the larger PDFWriter file?

The settings in distiller on both machines are identical.

BTW: thanks for your quick response.
-Mike-

[De Siem]

What George said but as i said before the first difference, is the ps driver that the distiller printer uses. There is a different version for Win 9x and NT-based platforms (like XP).

To make a good comparison, on your windows 98 machine from Word, print to the distiller printer and print to file. This will create a prn file, which needs to be opened in the distiller application to be converted to pdf.
Manually distill the prn file on the Win98 machine, then manually distill the same prn on the XP machine. Use the same source document and use the same distiller joboptions.

Then create a prn on the XP machine (of the same Word doc) and distill that on both platforms. That should give you a better insight. Obviously use the same default distiller settings.

If possible do it on the same machine if you working with a dualboot.