Hey guys,

i seem to have the need to distribute Pdf documents that are of the larger type (could be about 150MB each) and im looking for a way to distribute them to individuals. Email attachments only allow 10 or 20 MB for attachments. The pdf documents is a collection of high res images, so, they arent pdf's yet, i assume this would be the next step. Is there any way to compress them down? or would i need to set up some kind of server and provide links for people to download the file to their machine. I would like to do this electronically and not have to burn a bunch of CDs and mail them. This is a client/customer type setup, so, distribution via email would be an ideal solution, minus the attachment limits.

I appreciate all input on this topic, and thanks in advance! Please Help!

Huh? Are they pdf's or are they not pdf's?

How are you creating the pdf's?

"Normal" pdf's are already compressed, and running them through zip (or gzip, or bzip2) actually increases the size (in my experience).

If I take a modest bitmap (800x600, 24-color) file with a file sizeof 1.4 MBytes and create a pdf (by printing to Acrobat distiller from Photoshop Elements, for example), the resulting pdf file has a size of a little less than 20 kBytes, something like 1.3% of the original file size. This is a "normal" photograph (an evenly-lighted inside scene with a human and some furniture). Other bitmaps might have more or might have less redundancy, so the actual compression might vary. Note that this compression is not lossless. It may be subjectively "OK" for printing at the same resolution; but maybe not for detailed examination. Saving the file with jpeg compression gives some flexibility in terms of tradeoffs between compression efficiency and appearance.

For comparison, if I just run the bmp file through zip or gzip, I get a file size of about 1.1 MBytes, something like 80% of the original file size, not nearly as impressive as the pdf compression, but this is lossless. That is, it can be uncompressed to give, bit-for-bit, the same file as the original.

Bottom line: If you really need to transmit file sizes to customers that are larger than allowed for a single e-mail attachment, you could use some program like bsplit (look on the web) to break the file up into manageable chunks, but the customer would have to receive them separately and assemble them.

I have done this for my own use, but not for paying customers. I can't imagine telling a customer to take the seven or eight attachments from seven or eight separate e-mails and assemble them. (Probably using copy from a command prompt window.)

If there is no way to compress the files (and I don't know of any generall-purpose way more effective than distiller), then put them on a server and provide a link to the customer.

I assume that the customer has reasonably fast internet access, otherwise FedExing CD's would be faster than downloading hundreds of Megabytes.

Regards,

Dave

Thank You for responding.

The file is a PDF, and you bring up a point that i hadn't thought of before. It seems that it would be best to make the files as small as possible to accommodate for customers with slow internet connections, Now my new problem is, if i were to store this file on a server and provide a link to download it, is it possible to have only the customer download the file? and not just anyone that stumbles across the link? I ask because the customers may be paying for some of the PDF files. I want to set up a server of my own, but i have never done it before. I will seriously consider these.

Thanks Again!

You can set up an authentication so only the people you give the password to can access the files. This is usually done with a simple login form via a web page.

If you're not overly concerned about random people trying to hack the site, you can use some simple measures to handle the login. However, to make it more secure you have to invest more time in making it work right.

If you're just doing this yourself, then you need to decide how much effort you want to put into it or whether you want to pay someone to do it. It's really not that difficult to whip up a simple form with a "default" password; a more secure system involves databases, scripting, and other web practices that you may not want to get into.

Alternatively, you could just get an account at a photo holding site, e.g. photobucket, .Mac (if you have a Mac), etc., and post the pictures or files to there. Then you just provide the link and password to the client.

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In regards to your question about splitting the PDF file, there are numerous programs that allow you to split an existing PDF file. e.g
http://www.a-pdf.com/split/

Download that and try it.. if it's not working to the way you like, do a GOOGLE SEARCH on split PDF files.

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Thanks again,

I have thought of using something in the way of a login type access thing, but im thinking of maybe using a IP Address log to keep people from getting the files more than once. I would like to make the PDF Documents secure in a way that the customers that download them cannot turn each page into individual images, at least not really easily. Do you guys think that if i stored a few of these documents on a server with URL Links directly to the files, that maybe the customers wouldn't be able to get into any files other then the one(s) that they are entitled to?

Be aware that IP logging won't prevent them from using a different location to get the files, such as a WiFi hot spot, unless you are "binding" the access to a specific IP address.

If you use the full version of Adobe Acrobat, then your security issues will probably be met. However, if you're using a free PDF maker (like OpenOffice) then the files are open. Of course, there's nothing to stop them from printing out the document then scanning it back in however they desire.

As long as there wasn't a way for them to hack the URL and enter a different file location. For example, if all of your URLs looked like:

http://foo.bar/file_directory/file1.pdf
http://foo.bar/file_directory/file2.pdf
http://foo.bar/file_directory/file3.pdf

then it would be pretty simple to figure out what another file address is. So, a simple fix is to give each file a different directory structure, such as:

http://foo.bar/green_sleeves/file1.pdf
http://foo.bar/brown_slacks/zoot_suit/file2.pdf
http://foo.bar/fuzzy_cats/file3.pdf

Granted, this won't stop someone who can "break" the system and get to the overall directory page but it will keep the honest people honest, since they won't easily be able to figure out the storage scheme.

Naturally, the more files you get the more difficult it will be to manually manage this. At that point you'll probably want to consider setting up a real file server scheme with databases and authentication.

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