Question

Import Agent Profile Creating Larger Files

Import Agent

Updated July 20, 2018

asked on July 12, 2018

I have a customer that one of their import agent profiles is converting PDFs into TIFFs that are in fact larger file sizes (3 x the size). I don’t think this should normally be the case? Or if it is, is there any way to change it so the imported file size is the same or smaller? Below I’ve included a screenshot of the document as a PDF (before import, 513 KB) and then as a TIFF (1.74 MB after import). I tried creating a new profile and testing that, but it returned the same result.

They do not receive any error messages, the TIFF is still created in Laserfiche, it’s just created at a much larger size.

We run version IA 9.0.0.464 this issue started around the last week of June, we only realized large files were being created when we were only able to attach a few to an email before reaching the attachment limit. To my knowledge we haven’t changed anything that would have caused this to happen.
I will mention, this profile is different than all of our others, it actively converts scanned PDFs to TIFFs before importing them to Laserfiche. Our other profiles take documents that have already been scanned as TIFFs by our multifunction printers and just imports those into Laserfiche as is. Unfortunately that makes it difficult to compare them with one another!

We have gone into the Administrator Console and tested the User attributes but still get the same issue.

Also tried drag and drop with no luck.

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SELECTED ANSWER

replied on July 20, 2018

Thanks every one for the help and advise. My customer sent this to me today.

After some digging we’ve resolved the issue on our side—we initially approached it with the goal of reducing the size of the original PDF scan, so that even if the scan were to be tripled in size by IA it would work better for us.

We ended up changing the scan setting from greyscale to black and white, and this made a big difference. However, an added benefit—the scans when imported into Laserfiche and converted to TIFF didn’t change at all in size, in fact they were made smaller.

I suppose that might be a key takeaway, I’m guessing colour and tonal scans alike are made bigger when they go through IA, but black and white scans which aren’t as information heavy don’t. Just a theory J

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replied on July 12, 2018

In my experience this is perfectly normal, since the TIFF was automatically created from a PDF image using an algorithm. I can confirm that our customers report this as well, where I have watched them grow up to 10x their size from PDF to TIFF, if using the Laserfiche converter.

I do think that TIFF images generated directly from a source, like Photoshop, GIMP, or scanning software are much more efficient when it comes to storage size. But who knows what algorithm is being used to generate the image from a PDF and how much unnecessary data it is bringing over with it.

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replied on July 12, 2018

We also see the same behavior with our PDF imports, and I don't think it is avoidable because you are changing the files to an entirely different format with much less compression.

A PDF is a more complex file type, which behind the scenes often involves layers of different components designed to make things as compact as possible.

A TIFF on the other hand is a bitmap image file designed for low-loss and maps out every pixel in the image(s). As a result, PDF will always be much smaller.

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replied on July 12, 2018

Can you upgrade to a later version of Import Agent? Import Agent has gotten much better from the 9 days.

Does this version of import agent let you set it as a black and white image? Sounds like you are converting a black/white image to color.

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replied on July 13, 2018

Hi John

I will ask her about the B/W to color. They also said that this was no problem before last week although she say's nothing has changed that she knows of.

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replied on July 17, 2018

Hi John

I got this response from my customer.

I reviewed what was said on LF answers. The question I have—when converting the PDF to TIFF using Import Agent, the size goes from (for example), 1 MB to 4 MB. But when I use Laserfiche Snapshot to convert the document from PDF to TIFF, the document stays the exact same size, 1 MB to 1 MB.

I know it is possible to convert a PDF to a TIFF and not have it increase drastically in size, and I reviewed our records of scanned documents and there has been a definite change: Before the issue, a 3 page document would be at most 1 MB. After the issue, a 3 page document is on average 4 MB.

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replied on July 13, 2018

I never 'generate pages' unless users have a strong business case to make annotations (mostly redact). But after they're done, I package it right back to a .pdf because it causes quite a disk space issue.

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Import Agent Profile Creating Larger Files

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