Tiff image and pdf file size

I have a tiff file of 83Kb in size, but when I place the image into a pdf document it creates a pdf file of 949Kb.

If I put that same file into a pdf document using Adobe Acrobat (Standard V6) the size of the pdf file is only 36Kb.

The tiff file is a scanned image of a test print page from Windows XP. The scanner was set to scan the page at 300x300, A4 paper size and black and white. On placing the scanned image into the pdf paragraph I had to scale the image to fit the page.

Why is the size of the Aspose generated pdf so large? We wish to store the pdf documents in a database and cannot afford to have files of excessive size.

Dear RLewis,

Thanks for your consideration.

Is your TIFF image black-and-white? Is it a TIFF image with CCITT subformat? If so, set the IsBlackWhite property to true. If not, please send the image to pdf@aspose.com. I will have a test.

Yes the image is black and white. I tested with the IsBlackWhite property and the size has reduced to 35Kb. That is a great improvement in size.

However, it is much slower to produce a pdf file. After the scan is complete it takes about 50 seconds to create the pdf file. My PC is a P4 3.06Ghz with 1GB of RAM, and the CPU usage was about 52% for the time taken.

Dear RLewis,

Thanks for your consideration.

The low speed when using TIFF image with CCITT subformat is due to the complexed compression algorithm. It is not easy for me to optimize it.


Is there a recommended image file type to scan to that will result in the smallest pdf size?

I know our users would not find that sort of time lag acceptable, but from a dba point of view, I don’t wish to have large pdf files stored in our database.

Dear RLewis,

Thanks for your consideration.

The CCITT fax image is recommended according to your requierment. This type of image is black-and-white and it’s faster to generate pdf file with small size. Is it convenient for you to use this format?



It is convenient to scan to a tiff file before including into a pdf.

However, our users will not accept 50 seconds per page when they scan a document that could be more than 10 pages in length. If I turn off the IsBlackWhite property then the file size is too large.

Dear RLewis,

Thanks for your consideration.

Is it possible for you to scan to other format(e.g.,the CCITT fax format) instead of TIFF?

I have tried 2 methods to scan to CCITT fax format (Group 4).

The pdf file seems to be about the correct size, but Acrobat cannot open the image.
The error given is “Insufficient data for an image”.

Dear RLewis,

Thanks for your consideration.

Did you specified the image width, height and CCITT sub-format like the example in [Image](http://www.aspose.com/Products/Aspose.Pdf/Guide/Image.html)?

It turned out that my file was in fact a tiff file (despite its extension) with underlying CCITT subformat of Group4 Fax.

I am trying to find a way to scan directly to a raw CCITT Fax format file, as I have found it to be much quicker and with better compression. The other issue I will have is in determining the height and width of the image without loading it into a Bitmap object, because the CCITT fax image does not load into it.

Dear RLewis,

Thanks for your consideration.

Can you get the image width and height when scanning the image? It seems not possible to read the width and height from the raw image file.