Need to downside a PDF but it won't get any smaller

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
January 23, 2017
13 replies
92916 views

I have an indesign project that is about 13-16MB. I'm gone through and decreased the size of all the jpegs so they are all under 500mb in the file. I have a few pdf's in the file that are 500-1,000 MB. When I export, I have it set to downsize to 72 PPI but I have the quality set at maximum. If I decrease that too much, than the quality just isn't as good. When I do all of that my PDF is still about 7MB. From there I've optimized the PDF and I've also tried to reduce the PDF size and that only gets it down to about 6MB. Is there something else that I'm missing. I've looked at some settings and it shows that my content streams are about 50% which is the same as my images. Is there something I can do to decrease that. I basically have text, some arrows, lines, and a table in my document and then the rest is jpegs and a few pdfs. Are the arrows/lines causing that high content stream or would it be the PDF's inside the document.

Show previous replies

jane-e

Community Expert

If you want to make your InDesign document smaller, do a save as. I don't know if a smaller InDesign file makes a smaller PDF.

I know I should have checked first before posting, but I might not get back to this for a bit.

In this case, Save As reduced the size by 3.3 MB

Before:

After:

dave c courtemanche

Inspiring

smallpdf.com seems to shrink my files when my standard routes can't do anything.

BobLevine

Community Expert

There is a limit to how small you make a file. If the PDF optimizer in Acrobat can’t do any more, then you’ve reached that limit.

K

Kevin27574640h3dk

Participating Frequently

That is simply not true whatsoever.

If I go into Illustrator and export the PDF using the same kind of compression settings that I put into Adobe Acrobat, the filesize goes from 4.1MB to 1.96MB on Medium compression settings. And you can barely notice a difference visually.

If I plug in the exact same compression settings into Adobe Acrobat, it goes from 4.1MB to 3.9MB. If I decide to go nuclear and plug in the absolute highest compression settings making everything in the PDF so compressed it's barely legible, the file becomes 3.6MB.

Something is wrong with Abobe's compression settings.

leo.r

Community Expert

If I go into Illustrator and export the PDF using the same kind of compression settings that I put into Adobe Acrobat
By @Kevin27574640h3dk

What do you mean by "if I go into Illustrator"? Do you imply that you open your PDF file in Illustrator?

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