I managed to work out how to create a job application that is entirely written in the moderncv style. I use the moderncv class itself for my CV and the attachments (making each document a section with one to several scanned images embedded). For the cover letter I use the moderncv-based proposal of yes-man from a mrunix thread.
My problem is the file size of the attachment pdf. I have lots of certificates and documents to show. I scanned them and converted them from pdf to png and use
\usepackage{float}
\floatstyle{boxed}
\restylefloat{figure}
to show them in a pretty way.
But with only a selection of 18 images the pdf has 14 MB, with all images 28 MB. So I reduced filesize with gimp and then scaled the images with 1.5 instead of 0.6 - but the result is unacceptable low resolution (bad image quality).
Is there a solution out of this trap, i.e. is there a way to bring down pdf file size to 2-3 MB with ca. 18 almost full page png images embedded in a moderncv document - without losing readability and too much of image quality?
EDIT: I tried black&white with good (!) results:
-rw-r--r-- 1 tj users 1288744 25. Sep 20:27 scan1.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 tj users 70618 6. Okt 15:19 scan1b.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 tj users 496796 6. Okt 18:02 scan1c.png
-r-xr-xr-x 1 tj users 1743427 25. Sep 14:26 scan 1.pdf
scan1 is the default conversion from the pdf to png, scan1b is the result of reducing image size (to unreadable, unfortunately), and scan1c is scan1 in black&white - less than half the size, quite good.
pdflatex
supports PDF, JPG, and PNG out of the box,latex
+dvips
supports only EPS. I am not aware of any driver that supports PNG, but not JPG. Anyway, have you tried not converting your scans?