Is ClearImageLinkMetadata still useful in 2025?

Question

Hi,

I haven't used InDesign in a few years. I learned it for a specific project (a full magazine layout) and - with the help of this community - the end result looked the same despite dropping from 500Mb to 1Mb.

It was someone here that turned me on to ClearImageLinkMetadata to reduce those file sizes (apologies for not remembering who, because the difference was considerable enough for me to make a mental note to always do this if I have to use InDesign again).

But this was a long time ago, and I have been tasked to edit a couple of pages from the old mag project and re-export a new updated version of it. So of course, my first thought was "Do I still need to run that 3rd party ClearImageLinkMetadata tool before the final export to filter out hundreds of Mb worth of bloat?"

Or does InDesign finally offer the option to filter image metadata out during export (like it does with PSD layers that aren't turned on)?

Thanks!

Pariah Burke · Answer

In most workflows the presence of metadata is becoming more useful, not less. That said, InDesign doesn't concern itself much with final file size as no one distributes INDD documents. All the compression is done (if at all) by the export filters, for example, when exporting as EPUB or PDF you can choose the quality and resolution of images. Slimming down non-InDesign-format files is better left as the domain of the applications that directly edit those file formats.

If you want to reduce file size of a PDF as much as possible, then use Acrobat's built-in tool for that. In Acrobat, disable "the New Acrobat" and then choose File > Save As Other > Optimized PDF.

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