Hey folks. Long time no 'see'.
Late November I got a new job after months of sitting at home applying to various jobs (from DTP/graphic design to night watchman to store clerk) but now I'm back to doing what I've been doing for the past 12 years: DTP/graphic design.
Most of what I do is easy enough: putting together corporate brochures and software manuals.
Now here's my issue: the newsletter/e-mailing software we use has a 1MB file size limit for files sent with the software (they get hosted on their servers) and one brochure in particular is giving me major headaches. I can't get it under 1.5MB and then the images look like poo when the file gets printed, which doesn't make my boss very happy. Somehow my predecessor managed to get a similar brochure down to under 800KB at decent quality but of course no PDF export settings were saved.
Is there any way to shrink the file (20 A4 pages, 4 with full-page background images set to 20% opacity, each page with at least 2 regular images with drop shadows, text on every page) to under 1MB while keeping the images of sufficient quality for regular printers?
I noticed the AI files I placed added a lot to the file size when I hadn't made them to size in Illustrator, but should I change them and the company logo (repeated on every spread) to an image rather than AI file, or won't that matter?
Also, how can I get low-resolution (72-96 PPI) screenshots into the manuals without them getting blurry?
Should I avoid resizing them in InDesign, and instead Photoshop to do that?
Is it wise to increase the resolution while resizing them inside Photoshop or would that create noticeable quality differences between the various images?
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