One Response to “RADIOPLAY Issue #8”

1. Thomas E. Reed Says:
   March 21st, 2009 at 9:53 pm

   Hello. I came to this site to read the “Martian Manhunter: Strange Visitor” review. And while it was interesting…the PDF version of the magazine is what concerns me.

   I’m a long-time desktop publisher, and frankly, your magazine loads too slowly. It’s a function of the photos (bitmap images) used in the PDF. They are far too large for the publication, which makes them load slowly.

   Here’s some free advice. Use your photo editor (Photoshop, Corel Photo-Paint or whatever) to size photo images to the exact size for the publication. For example, for the cover, size the image to 8″ x 10″ at 72 DPI resolution. This last is critical. Computer screens can’t read anything finer than 72 DPI, and home printers aren’t likely to be putting out much better than that either. The smaller the image file size, the faster it will load. Putting all that detail into images that won’t be visible to the reader does you no good.

   For draw-type graphics (created by Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw or other programs) avoid complex fills like fine gradations. These make draw-type graphics larger and harder to load. For logos and symbols, draw-type graphics generally load faster and can be resized easier in your publishing program.

   These two hints will help your publications load faster and take up less space on your servers. It will also help if you get a legit version of Adobe Acrobat, instead of something like Bullzip PDF Printer, to create the final version. It’s expensive, true, but you don’t have to have the absolute latest version of Acrobat. Earlier versions will also work well. The big advantage of using Acrobat is that the program will compress the final PDF file and make it load faster as well.

   I hope this helps, and I wish you success in your future endeavors.

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