JPEG files enlarge when converting to PDF

Why does PDF Architect 6 create a more than 48 MB PDF file from a less than 8 KB JPEG? We have this problem from any jpg conversion when we do not print to pdf. It blows up the file size. Any help would be appreciated.

Hi,

I can't reproduce this here, no matter what jpg input I use, I end up with a decently sized PDF (e.g. 15kb jpeg 124kb PDF).
Please create a ticket with the PDF Architect Support Team:
http://web.pdfarchitect.org/support

Best regards

Robin

Thanks for the follow up Robin. I submitted a ticket on the 14th and have heard nothing back.

So what is the difference between the convert to pdf and print to pdf? if I print that to a pdf the size is smaller, but if I convert to pdf the size gets larger.

Orginal: 87.5 kb
Print to pdf: 80.0 kb
Convert to pdf: 306 kb

I had another look at this and it seems to me as if the direct conversion uses deflate (basically ZIP) to compress the image, which for most jpegs will mean a drastic increase in file size. I will create a ticket for the PDF Architect developers to have another look at this, thanks for your feedback and keeping on adding information.

Best regards

Robin

Robin,
Thank you for your help. Let me know if there is anything you want us to test out or bug fixes we could try. Do you have any other suggestions outside of printing to pdf we could use to covert JPEGS to PDFs other than printing? We have large plotter size drawings and knowing the size to print to is very difficult.

Do you by any chance have a PDFCreator Business license? PDFCreator Business comes with a tool called Images2PDF which should be handy for this. If you don't have a license, I will try to get you a temporary one.
PDF Architect also has an additional "Compress" feature in the PDF Architect main menu, which might help a little but the extra step shouldn't be required.

Thanks for the update. We do not have PDF Creator. We were planning to use PDF Architect. I would need temporary licenses. I understand how to convert and compress, but my scanning employees may not be patient enough or understand that extra step.

Won't compressing again make the degrade the quality of the pdf image?

But that is something I did see would work.

Hi,

yes additional compression can degrade the image quality, but usually this is exactly what makes the PDF smaller than the original jpeg (which is always compressed, jpeg has no uncompressed images). What seems to be happening in PDF Architect when directly converting a jpeg to PDF is, instead of using DCT/jpeg to compress the image inside the PDF, it uses lossless deflate (basically ZIP, as used in e.g the PNG image format) to compress the raw image (RGB) data extracted from the original image, which will be perfectly fine for some images like screenshots, while other images like photos will drastically increase in size. Since I work with the PDFCreator team I am not able to have a deep look into how exactly PDF Architect handles this, but everything indicates the issue is as described. How is your workflow currently, have you tried directly scanning to PDF with PDF Architect, or is that not practical in your case? If you'd like some temporary PDFCreator Business licenses please let me know how many and if your users are using clients or working on Terminal Servers.

Best regards

Robin

I really appreciate your quick feedback and help. You have actually been of more help then the support ticket I put in before hand.

In regards to scanning directly to PDF from Architect, we use a large flatbed scanner to scan our detailed engineer maps and need to be scanned to JPEGS for our users to make changes to them. On some occasions, we need to convert the JPEGS later to PDFs. I am also trying to get someone at PDF Forge to work with me on my issue with PDF Architect kicking an error when I try to scan to it from my scanner.

Would it be possible to get one temporary license for now so i can see how it works first and then request the other ones later? I would just need a client license.

I have sent you a pm with the key and the download link