Exporting PDF vs Reduced Size PDF

Yes, two deliverables. I should have made that clear from the start. My current workflow works very well, but seems like a pain to have to export from InDesign and then Open and resave from Acrobat. I was hoping to write a script that would automate the process to export both files directly out of InDesign. But it doesn't sound like it's possible with maintaining the same results I currently have. Maybe I'll look into creating a hot folder script.

Thanks for all of the input. I really appreciate your time.

Ah, so two deliverables. Make sense, thanks. Check out the Audit Space Usage feature of the PDF Optimizer too, and experiment with different JPEG compressions.

a.yalda, thank you for your reply. Yes, I have tried "Smallest File Size". The resulting file is 33mb. The weird thing is, if I then open that in Acrobat and do Reduced Size PDF, the resulting file is 30mb. But if I do the same thing to a high res file, then it's 1mb.

There's some kind of magic happening in Reduced Size PDF that I can't figure out!

All of our images are in Gracol or SWOP (CMYK), so that we control the final color conversion. I'd never trust putting RGB files in InDesign if the final intent is CMYK. It just takes someone selecting SWOP instead of Gracol to throw all the color off. Since all of our files are CMYK, I'd have to convert to RGB and so far, the file size saving isn't significant enough to warrant the processing time/color accuracy. Reduced Size PDF leaves them CMYK, which is more desirable for our use.

@Test Screen Name: The file that is being sent to publication isn't the low-res file. The low res file is only used for e-mail and for our job tracking software. We only send hi-res PDF/X-1a files to publication.

Have you tried using the native "[Smallest File Size]" export setting?

Also, do you need all pages for viewing? If not you could just have the first page exported which would probably not be very large.

I'd never use Reduce File Size on something destined for publication. Who knows what it's doing to your file... PDF Optimizer, maybe.

The reason I don't use compression on my hi-res PDFs is more of a habit than for a good reason. Your question prompts me to want to test some assumptions that I have about how long it takes to process a file on our RIP when proofing. I have always assumed it takes longer to RIP a compressed file than it would for an uncompressed file, but I haven't tested to find out if it's significant.

Bob, the end game for the PDFs is email and upload to some online tracking software we have for our jobs. These files are intended to be a quick reference to the larger, full-res PDFs and native files. So the image quality is secondary to file size, but we'd obviously like the quality to be as good as possible.

The reason for PDF/X-1a is that we do a lot of ad work, and most publications are behind on their requirements, so they request PDF/X-1a. I haven't tried testing to see if their online system will flag a PDF/X-4 cert.

What is the end game here? What are you doing with the PDFs

FWIW, if were me I would export a PDF/X-4 file and then open that in Acrobat to do whatever needs to be done. There’s no way you’ll ever get the same results out of InDesign.

Why do you choose "no compression on images"? This should never be done. If you don't want lossy compression, choose ZIP. Naturally, any space saver will find a lot to do.

Adobe don't tell us what "reduced size PDF" uses for settings, but it's unlikely to be print friendly. You can use the PDF optimizer for more control.