Three years ago I did a detailed write-up about A Catalog Full of CorelDRAW Mistakes. If you haven’t read it recently, I encourage you to read it again as I provided a number of errors you should avoid when creating files. Seriously, go read it as it could save you many hours of frustration.
OK, now that you are familiar with the problems in that file, we’re going to talk about issues in a different file. In this case, the file was only a single page instead of the 166 pages of nightmares contained in the catalog discussed previously.
In comparison, the file we’re discussing today doesn’t have nearly as many flaws in it. Some would even say it only has a couple of flaws. But those flaws make the file incredibly inefficient.
There are a couple of logos in the file that are repeated numerous times. Both of the logos were imported as bitmaps. Importing the bitmaps is the correct method to bring them into the file. Ideally the logos would be provided in a vector format as that would make the most efficient file. For whatever reason, we have bitmaps. One of the bitmap logos is .87 inches wide so it isn’t very large in terms of real world dimensions. Then I clicked on that small logo and it is 2656 dpi!!!
To make matters even worse, that small logo is repeated 25 times on the page. Just by reducing the resolution of that logo to 300 dpi (probably still more than is needed), we can save 170 MB! Another logo is repeated 50 times and it was imported at 504 dpi. Reducing it to 300 dpi would save around 50 MB more. Remember, this is a one page file and I’ve already described very simple changes to save 220 MB of data size (the saved file would likely be much smaller than the size of the uncompressed data).
Instead of copying the logos 25 and/or 50 times, could the logo be stored a single time as a symbol and then the symbol repeated as many times as needed? If so, the bitmap logo is only included one time in the file instead of many times. This would make the file even smaller in size.
For this file, the flaws were minor though they added up to a lot of excess file size. So as you are building your files, try to find even small changes you can make that will lead to much greater efficiency. Would you like me to look at your files and find the inefficiencies? Just Hire the Geek and I’ll gladly work with you to find the best solutions.
Foster,
Thanks for this discussion and the tip for making up a symbol for repeated use in a Draw file.
It is so very easy to copy and paste (in the most inefficient ways) and so make our documents very large (that 166 page document) or complicated (the sinple page with so many large yet small elements).
The software we use encourages us to get into bad habits, in this case merely copying and pasting. And when people don’t know the best way to produce documents — well, the difficulties multiply. seemingly exponentially.
We need to consider our work more carefully, so the Geek’s offer to look at files is welcome. With his help, perhaps we can come to plan our work more efficiently.
Regards,
Stilman Davis