With Wondershare, you can easily compress PDF to whatever size you need.
Now I just need to know how to call Acrobat in a batch script and have it run my custom Action, and then exit Acrobat gracefully so my batch script could continue on with its processing.HiPDF, a web-based application developed by Wondershare, is a solution available for all users to work with PDFs online without downloading the solution. So I guess my original question is a little more simplified if I use my "default printer" workaround. Why haven't Adobe just added some command-line switches that allow one to start an "Action" upon startup? I don't get it.
My research so far tells me it can't be done without some javascript programming. The problem that still remains is how to kick off the "Action" in batch mode. the amount of files we're receiving is expected to increase so I need to come up with a scalable solution.
This would be especially true if we find ourselves setting up a bank of PC to do all this in parallel. But, still, it would be nice to have a self contained process script that did not make any assumptions and explicitly configured the settings it needed for its job. But then again if we move forward with this approach that's not a big deal because I'm sure we would just setup a dedicated PC to do this. Of course, doing it this way leaves the Adobe PDF printer settings such that they are not at all the default I would want for normal PDF activities.
At least now when I open Acrobat Pro and click on my Action it doesn't stop and prompt me for the printer for every PDF file!
It's a workaround really, but I just went into Windows "Printers & Faxes", made the "Adobe PDF" printer the default printer, and changed its properties to those listed in my original question. I did progress a bit further in my setup yesterday w.r.t. The original size of the PDF files I'm processing average 217K and the resulting refried PDF files average 39K, a space savings of over 82%! Do the math on disk space saved for 700,000 files processed each month. The PDFs we're processing are only black and white with one small logo image (also greyscale), so refrying them still results in perfectly acceptable quality PDFs. for your responses but I've already exhaustively tried the Acrobat Pro features you mention (save as reduced and save as optimized) and cannot get the PDF size reduced nearly as much as with the "refry" method. Your originals will be untouched.Īlternatively (if you're confident they are being processed correctly), you could overwrite the files and have everything happen in the one folder.but call me a synic. The processed PDF's will be saved in the 'Reduced PDF's' folder. Review and change all the options you wantĬontinue as normal to save the Action and name it etcĪt the end of the day drop your PDF's into the 'Incoming PDF's' folder and then run the Action. Select 'Custom' from the Settings dropdown (top left) Under Output Format check 'PDF Optomizer' A Folder on my Computer (browse for a folder you will want to put your processed PDF's e.g. Preflight (More Tools) to see if there's any useful function there A Folder on my Computer (browse for a folder you will want to put your originals at the end of each day e.g.
Instead of printing to Adobe PDF you could run try the following in the Action Wizard: I'm sure there are different ways to achieve this with clever JS etc, but here's something you could look into. Do you have any thoughts on how to best accomplish this? Does Acrobat perhaps have a command-line mode? Regarding my original goal, I'll need to do this for hundreds of PDF files received by our company everyday, so I want set this up as a hands-off batch process that runs everynight. Is there a way to accomplish the above with the default Action wizard? If not, can it be done with Javascript? Rely on system fonts only do not use document fonts: Checked I would like my Action to use/set the following print settings:ī) Under Printer Properties button, Adobe PDF Settings table: When I click on the "Specify Settings" button under the Print tool, it just pops up an alert saying "The Print tool uses the settings in Acrobat's Print dialog". The problem is getting the Action to remember the custom Print Dialog settings I need. Getting the Action to work with a directory of PDF files for input and attaching the "Print" tool from the "More Tools" category is easy.
1) My goal is to reduce the size of hundreds of PDF files we receive on a daily basis.Ģ) I have found that the absolute best way to do this is to open the big PDF in Acrobat and "re-print" it to the Adobe Printer (85% reduction compared to only 50% reduction when choosing "Save as Other", Reduced Size PDF").ģ) Therefore, I'm trying to build a batch process using the new "Actions" feature.