How to decrease file size & photos effectively?!

[yanochka]

I am creating an 8 1/2 x 11 flyer and I have about 10 photos in it. The flyer will be for print and thus all photos need to be high-res.

The original photos were about 3000px in width and I reduced their size to 1500px using Adobe Photoshop. Then I inserted them in Illustrator and reduced their size even more.

However, my final .AI document is 100MB in size. How can I make it smaller?

[Medley]

First of all, decide what print size you want your images to be. Then go back to Photoshop to resize them under the Image>Image Size menu.

Here's an example. My Canon creates images that are 11.52 inches by 7.68 inches @ 300 dpi rsolution. Say I want to make a 3x3 image. Cropping the photo off square makes the image 7.68 inches square. At 300 dpi, the document is 15.2 MB in size. If I go to Image> Image Size, tick the resample image & constrain proportions boxes, and set the Document size to 3 inches instead of 7.68 inches, the document goes from 15.2 MB to 2.32 MB. Because I haven't changed the resolution (it's still 300 dpi), the image should be the same quality, so long as I don't try to print it larger than 3x3.

Obviously, your print sizes will be different (you still couldn't fit 10 3x3's on an 8x10 flyer) but the theory applies. Hope this helps you out.

-Medley.