Public bug reported:
I've been using xsane for years. I was very happy to see version 0.991
in Ubuntu Edgy 6.10 including PDF and multi-page output options enabled.
These features work, but the PDF file sizes could be more optimal.
For example, a one-page document I scanned using xsane and converted two
different ways produced a noticeably smaller file than xsane's PDF
version. (Approximately 8% smaller.)
Example: I scanned a US Letter size document three different ways in
xsane.
101769 -- test_0001.pdf -- scanned to pdf
1016760 -- test_0002.pnm -- scanned to pnm
93843 -- test_0002x.pdf -- converted using my procedure
101107 -- test_0003.ps -- scanned to ps
94081 -- test_0003x.pdf -- converted using ps2pdf
As you can see, xsane saved a single-page pdf file 101769 bytes long,
but the same document scanned as a pnm or a ps file then converted
produced a 93843 byte or 94081 byte file, respectively.
When scanning a multi-page document this difference in size adds up.
Here's the procedure I have used for years to get optimally-sized pdf
files:
1) scan all pages to pnm lineart at 300 dpi (tiff also works but you
must wait for xsane to convert each file)
2) convert -density 300x300 file*.pnm temp.ps
3) ps2pdf -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -sPAPERSIZE=letter temp.ps file.pdf
4) rm temp.ps
This procedure depends upon imagemagick's convert command and
ghostscript's ps2pdf command. It requires specifying the density in
convert and setting the page size in the ps2pdf. (If you don't add these
refinements, the resulting PDF image may be the wrong density or may
have the wrong size bounding box. I suspect these issues may depend upon
bugs/features of specific versions of imagemagick and ghostscript.)
** Affects: xsane (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: Unconfirmed
--
xsane PDF file sizes could be optimized
https://launchpad.net/bugs/75384
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