Strategies for minimizing the size of sometimes-large files.

If you have original digital photos, the file size is probably quite large. Unless you are a freelance photographer selling your wares (which is not allowed on NDSU servers) there is little reason to have the original-size files on CMS.

Conserve disk space (and avoid going over quota) by shrinking the photos before uploading them to CMS.

There are several methods for reducing the file size of images in bulk, but one easy-to-use method is described below.

Picture Resizer

A free bulk resize tool is available from RealWorld Graphics. To use it, all you need to do is

1. Download the PhotoResize400.exe program to your desktop
2. Rename it to make photos of the desired size.
   For example, if you want the shrunken images to be up to 800px wide/tall it should be named PhotoResize800.exe (or if you don't see the .exe to begin with, don't add the .exe extension back)
3. Drag photos onto the desktop icon

The resized images are now ready for upload to CMS.

Use Adobe Writer to save a reduced size PDF (File > Save As > select "Reduced Size PDF").

Use Mac Preview to save a reduced size PDF (In Preview, choose File > Export... > Quartz Filter > "Reduce File Size").

If the PDF contains images, scale down the images to the actual size needed for the PDF before inserting into the PDF editor.

If the display font of your document isn't important (generally, it isn't), un-embed fonts. If you need to embed the fonts, some PDF optimizers, such as Apago PDF Shrink (untested by CMS admins) may help to shrink the PDF file. This also benefits visitors, who can download and view your PDF file faster!

See also: tips from Adobe.