[reportlab-users] Reducing PDF File Size

[Joseph Dvorak]

 

I have a document with 4 pages, each having an image page .png background. There are 2 – 3 additional .png images of varying size on each page as well as a significant amount of text. The document also has 4 TT fonts beyond the built in fonts. I am using the open source version of ReportLab  version 3.6.5 and Python version 3.8.

 

ReportLab generates a document file of 3.4 MB.

 

How can I *significantly* reduce the size of the PDF file within ReportLab?

 

Thanks,

 

Joe

 

[Lele Gaifax]

Joseph Dvorak <joseph...@cambiumassessment.com> writes:

> I have a document with 4 pages, each having an image page .png background.

> [...]

>
> ReportLab generates a document file of 3.4 MB.
>
> How can I *significantly* reduce the size of the PDF file within ReportLab?

Try converting those PNGs to JPGs: AFAICT, PDF has a specialized reader for
JPGs, while other formats are stored in base64/base85.

ciao, lele.
--
nickname: Lele Gaifax | Quando vivrò di quello che ho pensato ieri
real: Emanuele Gaifas | comincerò ad aver paura di chi mi copia.
le...@metapensiero.it | -- Fortunato Depero, 1929.

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[Joseph Dvorak]

Lele,

 

Changing the images to JPG did it.

 

Thank you for the suggestion.

 

Joe Dvorak

[Robin Becker]

On 23/03/2022 07:13, Lele Gaifax wrote:
> Joseph Dvorak <joseph...@cambiumassessment.com> writes:
>
>> I have a document with 4 pages, each having an image page .png background.
>> [...]
>>
>> ReportLab generates a document file of 3.4 MB.
>>
>> How can I *significantly* reduce the size of the PDF file within ReportLab?
>
> Try converting those PNGs to JPGs: AFAICT, PDF has a specialized reader for
> JPGs, while other formats are stored in base64/base85.
>
> ciao, lele.

In fact non-jpeg images are now mostly stored with 'Flate' compression

self.streamContent = zlib.compress(raw)

We used to use A85 to try and avoid lots of binary content in the file as old style mailers used to corrupt them.

The image sizes may dominate gilsize because people use high resolution images.
--
Robin Becker