Inspiring

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PDF file size bloated wildly

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Emergency situation. I’ve had to delay publication because of a critical problem and my entire business depends on fixing it in the next two days or less.

Last year the on-screen-only PDF version topped out about 67 MB. Big but manageable. This year it’s over 165 Mb. This year was slightly bigger (a few more pages added but all vector animations and text). The size of the full .indd file went up from about 490 Mb to 692 MB. When I save-as it reduces to 386 until it’s opened.

Adding about a dozen vector images and text frames shouldn’t add 100 MB to a PDF, when downsampling is deeply constricted in size reduction (96/144, Medium resolution). I have an absolute ton of internal and external hyperlinks, cross-references and so on. Graphics aside from the cover are reasonably small for the most part, although there may be a handful that are a bit bigger.

What can I check and compress to make this a lot smaller? My hosting server will not allow a file that big, and I doubt my customers want a 160 Mb file on their phones and tablets either. My planned-weeks-ago book launch tonight was cancelled and I’m beyond panic right now.

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PeterD-NJAuthor

Inspiring

A final thought on the document corruption issue. This one was particularly nasty and it took about 10 hours chatting with Chat GPT to finally solve it. I had one huge image placed on 7 different pages and its position adjusted to fit the area needed. This is my general operating procedure and it works well normally.

During one crash of InDesign, that one image was damaged and placed in the middle of two-page spreads on which it was supposed to be placed. but it was pasted with zero dimensions, and was only visible as a micro-dot that was even microscopic zoomed in at 3200%.

Look between the two arrows. That’s a 56 inch x 15” canvas Illustrator file

This is what was placed in that micro-dot.

It was unmodifiable, not locked, but also not deletable. ChatGPT made a bunch of test scripts to find it and remove it (essentially looking for that filename but at a 0% magnification), and that finally worked.

I wish I knew how this happened because it happens somewhat regularly, maybe 3 or 4 times a year. And of course always at the Worst Possible Time. I saved that script and it’s now in InDesign’s preferences folder.

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rob day

Community Expert

I wish I knew how this happened because it happens somewhat regularly

Are you using any scripts in your workflow? A script that isn’t setting ruler units properly could cause the scaling problem you are showing.

Also, are you always placing (not pasting) assets? Pasted objects might not be listed in the Links panel and could also cause the kind of problems you are describing

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PeterD-NJAuthor

Inspiring

Only script is the one mentioned above, to delete those 0% objects if/when they reappear. Not a fan of scripts in general. And yes, all graphics are placed, never pasted.

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PeterD-NJAuthor

Inspiring

OK, so thanks to some tech support all day yesterday the problem with the corrupt document itself was resolved and a PDF was rendered. But now with that said, the resultant file is still 96 Mb from a 698 MB indd file. This is an interactive PDF not print. It’s a book being sold to the general public so I do have to leave interactive navigation features and internal bookmarks enabled. Here are the settings screens in the pre-print dialog:

I went down to lossy JPEG, 72 dpi + High quality and the results weren’t great viewed on a typical desktop monitor, although they would probably be fine on a tablet or phone. The file size went down to 68 Mb. Using maximum compression instead of high and all else equal the file size it was still pixelated and not really suitable for a book that people pay for. That file rendered at 70 Mb.

With the quality set to High instead of Maximum and the resolution increased to 96 instead of 72 the file size remained the same but with a noticeable jump in quality. This could actually work since the majority of the book is vector artwork with text annotations.

Final test was at JPEG/lossy, Maximum, and 96 dpi and that was successful. The images were still very good looking but the file size was a much-more-manageable 72 Mb. We have a winner!

My thanks to all for the help.

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BobLevine

Community Expert

The size of the INDD file and the size of the PDF have absolutely nothing to do with each other since the INDD file’s graphics are external.

That said, what type of interactivity are you using? If all it is bookmarks, URLs, and hyperlinks, you can export a print PDF instead.

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PeterD-NJAuthor

Inspiring

Intra-document navigation. Jumps between pages, jump-forward/jump-back just as you would on a browser, cross-references (hundreds of them) and internal hyperlinks, etc. Yes, I have the caveat of “only use Adobe reader for the features to work properly” warning and I’ve never had a complaint.

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Manan Joshi

Community Expert

Are you placing the images or embedding it? Also ,when you export the PDF you should turn off “Preserve InDesign Editing Capabilities”, that might help

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-Manan

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PeterD-NJAuthor

Inspiring

I will check that setting the next time I have to render a PDF. But the document is still profoundly corrupted at the moment and I have nothing to render. But yes, I will absolutely un-check that when I create the public-facing PDF, and leave it checked for the press copy, since they will be two different files.

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BobLevine

Community Expert

If the INDD file is corrupt, then you may have saved yourself by using that setting in the PDF. Try opening the PDF using InDesign.

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BobLevine

Community Expert

First thing would be to make sure that you don’t enable “Preserve InDesign Editing Capabilities” when exporting the PDF.

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PeterD-NJAuthor

Inspiring

I’ve never heard of this setting. Could you please tell me where to find it and what it’s purpose is? I don’t recall setting it, but would that not enable my printer to make last-minute modifications if he spots something I don’t?

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BobLevine

Community Expert

Yes, it would but as you can see, it blows up the file size. Here’s a screenshot of where to find it.

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