Participant

Question

Size of document too high

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
April 16, 2024
4 replies
408 views

Hi, I am trying to reduce the size of my InDesign document which is 189MB, 96 pages and an average of 3 pictures per page. All the photos are linked, not embedded. Is there a way for me to reduce the size? When I export it as a PDF it ends up being 109MB which is still too heavy to be able to download it easily on my website. I tried to use pdf compressor online to reduce it to 30 MB but the pictures end up being blurry. Thanks for your help!

Import and export

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Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@NICOLAS5E62

You will either have quality = high resolution - or small size = low resolution - you can't have both.

rob day

Community Expert

Hi @NICOLAS5E62 , AcrobatPro lets you audit and optimize space usage. You might check if there is any unusual overhead usage, which can be caused by excessive metadata. In AcrobatPro choose Optimize PDF>Advanced Optimization>Audit space usage and check Document Overhead:

leo.r

Community Expert

In addition to what Bob said, can you post some screenshots of how your average pages look like in InDesign? If you have 96 pages full of hi-res images of large dimensions then yes you can end up with a heavy-sized PDF.

In your case, it's 109 MB / 96 pages = 1.13 MB per PDF page. Reasonably sized PDF.

N

NICOLAS5E62Author

Participant

Here is a screenshot of how the average page looks like. Thanks!

leo.r

Community Expert

Here is a screenshot of how the average page looks like. Thanks!

By @NICOLAS5E62

Yes this confirms that everything is basically normal. Like I mentioned, if you export to PDF just one such page it will result in a ~1.13 MB PDF. Which is totally reasonable and expected. It's just if you have 96 of such pages the PDF size will multiply accordingly.

BobLevine

Community Expert

First off, the size of the INDD file and the PDF have nothing to do with each other.

If you want to shrink up the INDD perform a save as and just save it over itself. This will delete a bunch of stuff that keeps getting added to the file with each save.

As for the PDF, you get what you get. You can't have a small file and high quality; it just doesn't work that way. You can experiment with downsampling numbers to see if you can find a happy medium but there's a point where you're going to destroy the quality for the sake of file size.

N

NICOLAS5E62Author

Participant

Thanks for your help! I did what you suggested (save it over itself) and yes it went down to 134MB. Still trying to see if there is anything else I can do to reduce the size.

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