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 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs