Printing PDF on a MAC

[Dan Park]

Here is something interesting. Printing on PC,
used PDF995, file size 16MB
used built in pdf printer, file size 4MB

File size is dependent on a lot of variables, mostly due to the content of what you are printing.

We know on the MAC that the large size problem is related to font embedding. Files that don't have much text would be much smaller. Files that use primarily pixel data would likely be similar in size on both platforms.

PDF printer drivers have lot's of configuration options, many of which we don't provide in our Save As PDF... option.

If you intend to provide a useful guide to which driver to use it would be good to establish a benchmark using a set of files that have a variety of data.

Establish a set of test parameters that are adhered to on each test. For example:
Test 1: -> Paper Size: 8.5 x11, DPI: 600 -> Ouptut file size: xxxMb.

Make sure you are comparing the size of the files using the same settings. In my internal tests a single file could produce a PDF that varies from 4mb to 80mb using our internal PDF simply by changing print settings.