Optimizing for smaller files to email

[Artie61]

Hello , 

Is there a way to get smaller files from Jpeg pictures of Invoices sent to me. 

Example : I get invoices sent to me as Jpegs Then I would combine Multible invoices and send them by                               email . but sometimes they are rejected by the server because they are huge files ,

But , If I print  them and rescan them into a file a 20 MB file is knocked down to 100 KB ,  it would be easier if I could skip that part and save a ton of paper that ends up in the shredder by optimizing the file before Emailing ,

But I have tried Adjusting  every setting in optimiztion , Block size un checked then recheck settings I either get the file down but its pixalated or loss information if i play with lossy setting ,the file actually gets bigger !

Ok I hope I have explained it Clearly ,I also have tried different settings from other commenters but none are satisfactory 

Thx Artie

[gary_sc]

I think you've explained it clearly enough. 

An image that is (say) 2000 pixels by 3500 pixels is 7 million bits of data to start with. If you OCR that document, most of that data will go away without losing the important stuff (the text). 

If you scan the invoices into the TIF format, when it is converted into a PDF, the OCR process will be done automatically. When you can to the JPG format, you have to add the 2nd step of OCR yourself. 

Meanwhile, look at your copy of Acrobat for "Scan and OCR," and follow along with the process to OCR the invoice. Keep in mind that any written items on that invoice will NOT OCR and will remain a graphic and will increase the size of the invoice (but since it is only a small region of the invoice, the difference will be much smaller.

[Artie61]

Hi Thanks for the reply 

But I never had any luck with the scan and ocr its turns all my Docs into a time cunsuming correction campaign ,  where it changes the text and it quite frankly turns into a big mess ,

I cringe when accidently hit that button and the process starts and I cant stop it  ,I am using 2020 Adobe Acrobat 

I have not had any satisfactory results with that ,Although i do get some invoices in TIFF format I will try to see if thats the problem

But I cant see why I cant have the same results with JPEG , without actually using OCR or scanner or printer or paper ever again , 

[gary_sc]

Hi, @Artie61, I've been scanning with various scanning and OCR programs for about 27–28 years. Expecting perfect scanning, it seems like it should be next month or next year, and it'll be great. So far, it's far from that.

What I'd LOVE is for some of this AI to be applied to OCR. I'm a user of Grammarly, and I know that AI can do some impressive stuff there. Unfortunately, I'm not all that sure that Adobe could use that because AI in programs requires sending data to the net to do its stuff, and since Acrobat is used in a lot of businesses that do not want ANY of their data to get close to the net, it would be a non-starter. 

What I suggest you do is to put a scale on perfection: does this document need to be 100% perfect or can it be 90% perfect (and save you a lot of time and anguish? I very seldom proof my OCR results, and I've never had any complaints. 

A couple of extra thoughts: you do not mention images, but images and the number of fonts in your document are the two largest contributors to large PDFs. Try and limit those whenever possible. (Also, see my last paragraph on the image issue.)

As far as scanning itself goes. I am on a Mac, and Acrobat requires the Mac user to use Apple's "Image Capture" for scanning. Image Capture is the worst piece of scanning software ever, and I do not use it at all (unless I'm demonstrating how bad it is). I own an Epson V800 flatbed scanner and use it with good results using the Epson software and GREAT results using SilverFast scanning software. But unless you're doing images as well as documents, it's like buying a Cadilac to get your grocery shopping done. 

Some time back, I wrote a Blog for Adobe on how to get clean scans; it might help you. 

https://community.adobe.com/t5/adobe-community-professionals/scanning-clean-searchable-pdfs/m-p/4785...

One point here: if you scan a document and there are gray regions on the scan, or you can read the text on the opposite side of the scan, all that are considered images that add to the storage size of the final PDF. If you eliminate those using the suggestions I provide in the blog, you might be able to reduce the size of your PDFs.

Good luck!