Hello,
I've completed a tri fold brochure in inkscape using images made in Gimp and graphics designed in inkscape. I'm limited in software (don't have illustrator) as well as file formats that I can use to send to the commercial printing house (they prefer pdf or eps files).

I tried exporting PDF, but the file is 67MB....

Any recommendations?

Welcome to the forums, vboom871!

So the problem is that 67 mb is too big?
Try this -- open the SVG in Inkscape and go to File menu > Vacuum Defs. That will remove a lot of unnecessary stuff, and reduce the file size. I don't know if it will reduce it enough, but it's certainly worth a try. Then save as PDF.

When you do the SVG to PDF conversion, do your images and graphics convert ok? You might notice that things like blurs, gradients and filters don't export properly. But I'm curious about the images made in GIMP. Do they contain any gradients, blurs or filters? If so, do they remain intact with their blurs, etc. after the conversion?

If Vacuum Defs didn't reduce the size enough, I think you could save the whole thing in PNG format, and thereby reduce it quite a lot. Then save as PDF.

Thank you for your help! I used the vacuum defs function and it reduced the pdf size to 7mb from 67! I have not worked with commercial printing before, so I assumed that 67mb was too large a file. Do you have any experience with this?

Also, to answer your questions regarding pdf quality; yes, there are some issues. Mostly font issues so far, but some of the graphics from inkscape become rigid (i.e. pixilated). The pictures I developed (and blurred the backgrounds) in GIMP seem to look great in the resulting pdf - no issues. All in all, the size was the real battle for me (was worried the comm. printer would laugh at me). All the other conversion issues seem something that I can work around with a bit of trial and error.

Thanks again, I really appreciate the support.

Also, to answer your questions regarding pdf quality; yes, there are some issues. Mostly font issues so far, but some of the graphics from inkscape become rigid (i.e. pixilated). The pictures I developed (and blurred the backgrounds) in GIMP seem to look great in the resulting pdf - no issues. All in all, the size was the real battle for me (was worried the comm. printer would laugh at me). All the other conversion issues seem something that I can work around with a bit of trial and error.

The reason I asked is that we have a lot of messages complaining about losses of blurs, gradients and/or filters in the SVG to PDF conversion. And your message made me wonder about raster images (ie - from GIMP) embedded in SVGs, and whether they would behave like pure SVGs.

So now I'm wondering if there might be some cases where we can suggest for these users to embed raster images in their SVGs, before converting to PDF. They could still even create the images in Inkscape, and export only the portions using blurs, etc. to PNG. Then turn around and embed the PNG(s). I don't think this would work with the text issues, though.

So strongly I wonder about this that I think I will give it a try on an image or 2 that I've wanted to convert to PDF, but couldn't without losing blurs or gradients.

brynn wrote:So now I'm wondering if there might be some cases where we can suggest for these users to embed raster images in their SVGs, before converting to PDF. They could still even create the images in Inkscape, and export only the portions using blurs, etc. to PNG. Then turn around and embed the PNG(s). I don't think this would work with the text issues, though.

Even simpler, just use alt-b to create a bitmap copy of an object/objects then delete the original (or move it to a hidden layer). You will most likely want to go into the preferences and under Bitmaps change the resolution to something better than 90dpi.

-Rob A>

Oh nice! Yes Rob A. I've not used the bitmap copy feature before. But you're right, that should work very well.