Question: I would like to compress all my files, electronic and scanned, in various formats to PDF. Will the output files always be significantly smaller than the input files?

Answer: Generally, most files are somewhat bloated and can be significantly compressed before storing in a database or uploading to the web. This is especially true for image files which can often be reduced by a factor of 10x or more for black and white and 100x or more for color. However, there is no guarantee that all files will compress using CVISION PdfCompressor.
In particular, files that are already in electronic format may compress dramatically or not at all. For example, generated business invoices may already be as small as possible, entirely electronic, with no redundant font information. On the other hand, sometimes generated invoices contain corporate logos which might account for 90% of the invoice file size. In such a case, a reduction of 10x or more is still possible using a compression module such as CVISION PdfCompressor by i. compressing the image streams, and ii. sharing these image objects across the multi-page PDF document.

In short, reducing file size for web-based applications is often non-trivial, but may well be a crucial part of getting the application to run efficiently. Trying various compression options to see what works is a good idea. Alternatively, submitting your data to have the “experts” take a look at it, is highly recommended.

If you are interested in submitting files for compression, please email: support@cvisiontech.com. We will gladly look at them, and inform you of the necessary settings to compress the files.