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LinkOptimizer: $139⁹⁵ • Save 10-20% on bundles with other products

LinkOptimizer Light: 99⁹⁵

How LinkOptimizer will save your storage space,
time and production costs

Q&A

What is LinkOptimizer?
LinkOptimizer is a utility for Adobe InDesign that allows you to reduce the size of linked images by eliminating excessive image data.

LinkOptimizer will automatically reduce the image resolution, scale and crop the images in Photoshop according to their dimensions in the InDesign document and the target resolution specified, and reimport them to InDesign at 100%.

How LinkOptimizer will help me?
LinkOptimizer will help you save valuable storage space, time and reduce production costs in a variety of ways by reducing the size of images linked to your InDesign document:
• saving valuable hard drive and backup storage space
• increasing speed of printing of your document and creating PDF files
• saving valuable time when transferring your job to service providers, publications or any other outside sources:
-reducing time of compressing your job to StuffIt or .zip archives
-speeding up FTP or e-mail transfer
-reducing time of CD burning or copying your job to removable media
• reducing the cost of your job through faster processing by service providers
• speeding up your overall job turnaround

How dramatic the improvements can be?
Depending on the size of your job, the space savings from optimizing the image sizes can be amazing. The most remarkable example in my practice so far was a glossy auto maker brochure which went from 6 GB to 500 MB. It's twelve times less than the original size.

LinkOptimizer can be also as helpful in preparing your really small jobs. Let's say you have a small document which you need to send by e-mail. The linked image is cropped and scaled down in InDesign, however its original size is 60 MB, which is too big for e-mail transfering. LinkOptimizer will automatically crop, scale down and reduce the image resolution in Photoshop for you. Depending on the project, the image can become as small as 2 MB and ready for e-mailing.

Why would I want to optimize the effective resolution?
Effective resolution is the resolution of the graphic after it has been resized in InDesign. For example, if an image which original resolution is 300 dpi is scaled down 50% in InDesign, its effective resolution becomes 600 dpi.

Very often the effective resolution exceeds by far the resolution that's sufficient for printing. For example, most of high quality printed pieces such as magazines, glossy brochures, flyers etc. don't require resolution higher than 266-300 dpi. Most newspapers don't require resolution more than 200 dpi. For some large format posters and billboards the resolution can be low as 50 dpi. And, if your project is designed for the Web, you usually don't need more than 96 dpi.

Any amount of image data that exceeds your required effective resolution is just a waste of your valuable storage space, printing and job handling time.

An 8.5x11 inch 300 dpi CMYK image weights about 32 MB (it's about the size of an A4 page by European standards). If it's scaled down 50% in InDesign, you only need about 8 MB of the image - a quarter of its size (the size is reduced quarter-fold when you scale the image and maintain your target resolution). LinkOptimizer will automatically save that 24 MB (and more if image is cropped) per image for you by opening the image in Photoshop, scaling it down, reducing its resolution, cropping and importing it back into InDesign at 100% of the image size at its exact location in your document.

I can crop and scale images in Photoshop manually, why do I need LinkOptimizer?
Sure it's possible to optimize the links manually in Photoshop and then manually relink and adjust their position in InDesign. However, it can be incredibly time-consuming and tedious, and can lead to mistakes as well. This task, depending on a project, can take several hours, and even days. LinkOptimizer will do all this automatically for you in a fraction of the time, with much higher precision and error-free.

I never supply collected jobs, my final output is always to PDF. Can I still benefit from LinkOptimizer?
Absolutely. First, LinkOptimizer can help you increase the speed of creating PDF significantly (see the next question about the image processing as well). The speed improvements will be especially remarkable for large documents and when you have to create PDF multiple times (after correcting your document, for example).
Also, when you archive or backup your job, LinkOptimizer will help you save your valuable storage space as well as perform those tasks faster by reducing the job size.

Why would I print my document or create PDF any faster after cropping the images in Photoshop? I heard that InDesign sends only visible part of the image during the output anyway.
This is not true. That is, it's only true for TIFF and native Photoshop (.psd) images. In case of EPS, InDesign will ALWAYS send the entire image to the printer no matter how much it's cropped in InDesign.

That is, if you have a 100 MB Photoshop EPS image placed in your document, InDesign will always process the entire 100 MB during the output, even if only a half of the image is visible in the document. If you have several Photoshop EPS links in your document, the increase of printing speed can be astonishing just by cropping those links to their final size in Photoshop.

In fact, InDesign doesn't introduce anything new in this area of image processing. Even antique programs such as PageMaker 5, FreeHand 4 and QuarkXPress 3 processed images exactly the same way: they always output only visible part of TIFF images, and always output the entire EPS image.

Will LinkOptimizer tell me how much space it saved after optimizing the links?
Yes, LinkOptimizer will tell you exactly how much space it saved in megabytes as well as the percentage saved compared to the original size of the links (see screenshot below).

screenshots/LO_saved

Will LinkOptimizer preflight my document?
LinkOptimizer doesn't really preflight your document, however here's a trick for you how to turn LinkOptimizer into a nice little info tool: specify target resolution of 1 dpi and click the Analyze button. LinkOptimizer will show you the effective resolution of all your document's links. Obviously, don't process your images with this target resolution after analyzing.

How do I know how long it will take to analyze or process the links?
LinkOptimizer will always show a detailed status of the analyzing or processing stages (see screenshot below). You will also see the progress bars displayed by Photoshop while processing the images.

Does LinkOptimizer compress the images in any way or change their format?
No, LinkOptimizer neither applies any compression to the images nor changes their format.

Will my images print any differently after being processed by LinkOptimizer?
No, your images will be printed absolutely the same way as before being processed by LinkOptimizer.

There will be no changes in any appearance attributes of the images such as color, brightness, sharpness etc.

What about the 1-bit black-and-white images? They require much higher resolution than the color and grayscale ones.
Not to worry, LinkOptimizer will ignore 1-bit black-and-white images (which are also called "bitmap" in Photoshop or "monochrome").

How safe is the processing?
LinkOptimizer works with images in a very safe way: it processes an image in Photoshop, reimports it into InDesign document, and then moves to another image. It ensures that even in the case of an unexpected event, such as a Photoshop crash, your images will remain properly positioned in the document - either being processed by Linkoptimizer or in their original position.

Do I need any special InDesign or Photoshop plug-ins to use LinkOptimizer?
No.