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When Working With PDF Printers, Watch The File Sizes

Martin Brinkmann — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:12:01 +0000

Roman just posted an interesting observation about pdf printers on the Ghacks forum. He noticed that the output file size of pdf printers differed considerably. In his own test, he noticed a difference of nearly 400% between the smallest file size and largest file size. While that’s just been a single test, it shows that users may do good to test various pdf printers if file size is a criteria for them.

Roman printed a webpage to pdf document that included text and some images. I decided to investigate the issue further, and came to similar conclusions.

The following pdf printers were used in the test:

You can check out additional pdf printers over at the overview at Freeware Genius’s blog.

I have tested two different documents, first a Word document from SEOMoz, and second the forum page containing Roman’s forum post.

The results

Word document, original file size 439 Kilobytes

Bullzip PDF Printer: 350 Kilobytes
DoPDF 7: 317 Kilobytes
PDF Creator: 348 Kilobytes
Primo PDF: 512 Kilobytes

Web page, original file size 450 Kilobytes

Bullzip PDF Printer: 256 Kilobytes
DoPDF 7: 212 Kilobytes
PDF Creator: 240 Kilobytes
Primo PDF: 172 Kilobytes

The differences are not nearly as wide in range as Roman’s findings, but they may still be considerable. Especially the Word document differences are noteworthy. While Bullzip PDF Printer, DoPDF 7 and PDF Creator remain between 317 and 350 Kilobytes, Primo PDF breaks out resulting in a file size increase of 150 to 200 Kilobytes.

It is rather surprising that the pdf printer with the largest file size managed to create the lowest file size converting the web page. The three other printers are again close to each other, with DoPDF a little bit better than the other two.

Some pdf printers may come with options to reduce the file size of the resulting pdf documents, for instance by compressing images. All tests have been conducted with the default settings.

This test concentrates on file size, and there may be other factors playing a role for users, pdf quality a top one. A difference of a few hundred Kilobytes makes no big difference if the documents are stored on a desktop PC, they can however have an impact if the pdf documents are stored and accessed on mobile devices like ebook readers or smartphones with limited space and processing capabilities.

My suggestion would be to install at least two different pdf printers on the system for best results. Ideally two different printers, for instance one that utilizes Ghostscript (which many pdf printers do) and another one that does not use Ghostscript.

Have you been working with pdf printers? If you did, tell us about your experience in the comments.

The best way to create pdf documents

Martin Brinkmann — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 10:46:31 +0000

I have been using two methods to create pdf documents lately and made the decision to stick with one of them after evaluating both of them. Creating pdf documents is not something that I have to do on a daily basis but it was always a rather complicated process because I did not want to purchase a professional version of Adobe Acrobat only to create a handful of documents each year.

The first method that I discovered was a online service that created a pdf document out of documents that I would upload to their website. The newly created pdf document was then send to my email account. While this message had the advantage that I did not have to install a software on my system it has some disadvantages.

The most important for me are privacy concerns. I sometimes have to convert documents that I don’t want to expose to others and I don’t want to take that risk even if it is a slim one.

A far better solution in my opinion is doPDF which installs itself as a pdf printer on your system. Whenever you would need a pdf document you would simply choose to print – which does not print but save – the document that you want to convert.

This way a pdf document is created without third party involvement which is way better in my opinion.

Take a look at the Youtube video to see a demonstration:

link: dopdf homepage
online pdf converter: pdf online

Free Fast Virtual PDF Printer

Martin Brinkmann — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 21:35:13 +0000

I’m currently using the Screen grab extension in Firefox to save complete websites as pdf files to read them later or print them eventually. Screen grab has some limitations, mainly size of the website that should be saved and that it only works in Firefox. I sometimes use Opera or want to convert other documents such as emails to pdf.

DoPDF looks like the perfect replacement for Screen Grab. It is a freeware application for Windows and takes only a few megabytes of hard drive space. It adds a virtual printer to your installed printers in Windows and you can choose to make it the default one. Please make sure that the Print Spooler service is running during installation, otherwise the setup of the virtual printer will fail.

Once installed you can select the virtual printer in every print screen with the option to configure the output further. It is possible to define width and height or use predefined formats for the output. The last step is to simply select a filename and location for the newly created pdf file.

It will be saved in that location on your hard drive and displayed when the creation finishes. I decided to stress test it a little bit. The creation of a 41 paged text document took only two seconds. I uninstalled Screen grab immediately after seeing this incredible results.