Help! Questions About Posting Cross Stitch PDF Files

To any of you who post complimentary cross stitch designs as PDF
files...Help! I recently posted two new Freebies on my site but can't
seem to get the dial-up download time to less then 5 minutes. I have
broadband so I'm a terrible judge of download time. A friend with
dial-up service is helping me by downloading them. I'm saving these
files at 144 dpi instead of 72 dpi because the physical size of the
charts are larger than the average Freebie out there, (The Bremen Town
Musicians is 54w x 196h.), and I'm worried that because the charts are
fit to only 1 or 2 pages, (making smaller symbols), that the print
quality will be poor at 72 dpi. (The BTM is 1.29 MB & HH is 832.7 KB)

Here's the question - What are the most optimum settings for cross
stitch charts when distilling to a PDF file? How do I keep the file
size down for quick downloading and yet print quality up for good
resolution?

Thanks so much for any advice!

Brooke Nolan
Brooke's Books Publishing
http://www.brookesbookspublishing.com/Freebies01.html

brookenolan ) writes:
(snip)
Here's the question - What are the most optimum settings for cross
stitch charts when distilling to a PDF file? How do I keep the file
size down for quick downloading and yet print quality up for good
resolution?

Thanks so much for any advice!

Brooke Nolan

I am afraid I can give you no advice whatsoever on speedy
downloading. However, it reminds me of how nice it would be if we had
some sort of standard format for transmitting counted cross stitch designs.

--
Jim Cripwell.
The gods do not subtract from the allotted span of one's life, any
time that is spent in stitching.
Adapted from a sign on The Cobb, Lyme Regis, England.

Here here!

Brooke Nolan
http://www.brookesbookspublishing.com

brooke wrote:

To any of you who post complimentary cross stitch designs as PDF
files...Help! I recently posted two new Freebies on my site but can't
seem to get the dial-up download time to less then 5 minutes.

I haven't yet posted any, but I've downloaded quite a few. I'm betting
that the problem is the cover page. It's lovely, but most designers
don't include it.

I know that, when I convert a picture into a chart on my photoshop, it
takes less time to print that the photo did. I think it's because the
colors have been simplified. (The most colors I've used so far is
eight.) I guess it uses up a lot more bytes to do realistic color!

I don't know how Adobe works. It *may* be - and this is pure speculation
- that it has a couple of fonts it prefers, and recognizes as text.
Other fonts may be treated like graphics, which takes longer.

That's pure speculation, arising out of my figuring out why it takes my
printer so much longer to print certain fonts (in black), while it spits
out Times New Roman with ease.

Ruthie
alowan roo earthlink roo net

Ruthie wrote in message link.net...
brooke wrote:

To any of you who post complimentary cross stitch designs as PDF
files...Help! I recently posted two new Freebies on my site but can't
seem to get the dial-up download time to less then 5 minutes.

I haven't yet posted any, but I've downloaded quite a few. I'm betting
that the problem is the cover page. It's lovely, but most designers
don't include it.

I know that, when I convert a picture into a chart on my photoshop, it
takes less time to print that the photo did. I think it's because the
colors have been simplified. (The most colors I've used so far is
eight.) I guess it uses up a lot more bytes to do realistic color!

I don't know how Adobe works. It *may* be - and this is pure speculation
- that it has a couple of fonts it prefers, and recognizes as text.
Other fonts may be treated like graphics, which takes longer.

That's pure speculation, arising out of my figuring out why it takes my
printer so much longer to print certain fonts (in black), while it spits
out Times New Roman with ease.

Ruthie
alowan roo earthlink roo net


Some fonts, like Times Roman and Arial/Helvetica are built into most
printers. (There used to be a standard set that were built into all
PostScript printers, and other kinds of printers have equivalent fonts
and the drivers tend to be set up to mapthings appropriately.)

If your document uses native printer fonts, the printing program just
needs to send the letters. If your document uses other fonts, the
program needs to tell the printer, in detail, how all of the letters
are shaped. Which takes longer. The font file or set of font files can
easily be bigger than your whole document.

Elyse

If your document uses native printer fonts, the printing program just
needs to send the letters. If your document uses other fonts, the
program needs to tell the printer, in detail, how all of the letters
are shaped. Which takes longer. The font file or set of font files can
easily be bigger than your whole document.

Elyse

Thank you Ruthie and Elyse for your help! The fonts issue is a good
one but I don't think that could be it because I'm creating the PDF
from an EPS file in Adobe PhotoShop. An EPS (Encapsulated Postscript
file) is like a TIF (Bitmap image) in that all printers are
interpreting the pages including the fonts as images. Ruthie...Your
idea about the cover page might be on track because I don't see many
Freebies with color photos of the stitched piece. I just feel like I
need to give stitchers the best quality publication even if it is
free...Well...I guess you are all paying for the ink so it's not
exactly "free". Ha...Maybe I'm stuck with slower downloads if I want
to include covers and up to three pages in a publication.

If anyone has some tricks to optimized the distilling process, I'd
love to hear. Hope you'll go see our Freebies - Thanks again!

Brooke Nolan
Brooke's Books Publishing
http://www.brookesbookspublishing.com

Ruthie...Your
idea about the cover page might be on track because I don't see many
Freebies with color photos of the stitched piece. I just feel like I
need to give stitchers the best quality publication even if it is
free...

Here's another thing to try: before you add the cover to the EPS file,
use the "save for web" function (in the file menu). I don't know how,
but it reduces the size of the file considerably. I use it for my ebay
photos, and haven't noticed *much* reduction in quality. Unlike the
"resize image" function, it doesn't change the size.

Or crop the front page to just the image of the work, resize it to
something appropriate, and add it to the first pattern page as a jpg file.

I love playing with my Photoshop!

Ruthie, getting ready to go spend money in Texas

alowan$earthlink$net

Brooke, you could make two .pdf files for each project. The first would
be just the chart and the second would be the chart + the color picture.
If anyone in a hurry or on dialup wanted just the chart, it would
download quickly. It would take up slightly more space on your server
to store two files instead of one.

brookenolan wrote:
Thank you Ruthie and Elyse for your help! The fonts issue is a good
one but I don't think that could be it because I'm creating the PDF
from an EPS file in Adobe PhotoShop. An EPS (Encapsulated Postscript
file) is like a TIF (Bitmap image) in that all printers are
interpreting the pages including the fonts as images. Ruthie...Your
idea about the cover page might be on track because I don't see many
Freebies with color photos of the stitched piece. I just feel like I
need to give stitchers the best quality publication even if it is
free...Well...I guess you are all paying for the ink so it's not
exactly "free". Ha...Maybe I'm stuck with slower downloads if I want
to include covers and up to three pages in a publication.

--
Brenda Lewis
WIP: ...on hiatus...

Thank you Brenda and Ruthie...Good advice. I love my PhotoShop
too...Amazing what you can do with it!

Take care,
Brooke Nolan
http://www.brookesbookspublishing.com