Participating Frequently

Question

Huge documents when saved with "Screen Mode Normal" vs "Screen Mode Preview"

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
October 2, 2023
4 replies
1608 views

I have a multipage document which, when it is in normal screen mode activated, saves a file of 60GB, and when I change the mode to preview, the result is a file of only 50MB. How is that possible? Thanks

This topic has been closed for replies.

rob day

Community Expert

There’s also a more in-depth discussion here;

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/file-size-is-too-big/td-p/9370587#10084949

Stefan Rakete

Inspiring

I have a bloated indesign document with the photoshop history / photoshop DocumentAncestors of a file, that is not even linked with the document anymore. I cannot use the script solution. Remove from IDML the only way to get rid of it? Removing all pageItems from the document does not solve the issue

rob day

Community Expert

Hi @Stefan Rakete , Have you tried a Save As? That works for me when the corrupted links have been deleted:

rob day

Community Expert

Hi @ds_retouch , This sounds like the Photoshop metadata bug, where accumulated history metadata in placed image files can bloat an ID file—unless you are embedding very large image files a 60GB ID file would not be normal. See this thread for a scripting fix:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/is-there-a-script-to-clear-indesign-metadata-redundancy-or-the-clipboard-just-like-photoshop/m-p/12638735#M460299

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@rob day

But how existence of metadata would make INDD file much bigger only in certain preview mode?

rob day

Community Expert

No idea, but it might be worth running the ancestor metadata script to check if that’s the source of the bloat.

D

ds_retouchAuthor

Participating Frequently

actually 16 GB to 50 MB, my mistake

a huge difference anyway

D

ds_retouchAuthor

Participating Frequently

It's not just a single file. I am not discussing a particular case here, but a general problem that I and my colleagues have been facing for some time. I can't understand why, if everything you put in it is brought as a link and not embedded, I have a few lines of text, and yet the resulting files are tens or hundreds of MB. I remember the days when an InDesign file was super small, like an idml from now
I decided to write here, now, because I was shocked by the difference. The file is ok. We are looking for solutions to make it smaller and by chance, we noticed that if you save it with screen mode preview it makes it 300 times smaller. IT'S RIDICULOUS.

BobLevine

Community Expert

50 to 16 is not 300 times smaller. The previews are saved with the file. Depending on the contents, the file size difference is most certainly understandable. You should also be doing a SAVE AS to get a true measure of the file size.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

A bit strange... What is the contents of your file?

Or maybe not... InDesign is saving previews within the INDD file - maybe that's why?

Do you have bitmaps or a lot of vectors?

D

ds_retouchAuthor

Participating Frequently

does it really matter? it's the same file saved with 2 different screen modes.

They are ads with a lot of images, bitmaps

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

I've just done small test:

Yes, only 4 pages with few graphics - but the % difference should be similar to yours?

Something else is going on with your file - have you tried IDMLing? Maybe your file is corrupted?

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