How do I stop Acrobat Pro DC reducing my file size?

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
April 10, 2017
2 replies
5897 views

A friend created a print version of a flyer for me with some cool high resolution images. I needed to correct a text error so subscribed to Acrobat Pro DC. After downloading acrobat pro I used it to open the file that was sitting in a drop box. My friend had actually fixed the error himself so that was cool. I then closed down the file but when I came to upload it to the print company I noticed that the file had been shrunk considerable and the resolution of the images was now too small and the file was useless. Why did acrobat shrink my file without me asking it to? I do I stop it doing this? If every time I open a high resolution file destined for the printers it gets 'optimised' or shrunk then the programs useless! Can someone enlighten me?

Create PDFs

Correct answer Dov Isaacs

Neither save nor save as in Acrobat does anything at all to modify text, vector artwork, or images in a PDF file unless you specifically perform optimization or file size reduction operations. And the fast web view option is totally irrelevant to this as well.

The actions of simply opening, viewing, possibly printing, and closing a PDF file makes absolutely no changes to the PDF file on disk. And even if you perform operations that would change the PDF file contents, unless you explicitly use save or save as or any other operation that prompts for where to save the PDF file, the PDF file is not modified!!!

Whatever caused your file to “shrink” as you describe it from several megabytes to 90 Kbytes had nothing to do with what you describe you did in Acrobat. Maybe your friend slipped up when saving the file when making the fix to the error that you described.

- Dov

Dov IsaacsCorrect answer

Legend

Neither save nor save as in Acrobat does anything at all to modify text, vector artwork, or images in a PDF file unless you specifically perform optimization or file size reduction operations. And the fast web view option is totally irrelevant to this as well.

The actions of simply opening, viewing, possibly printing, and closing a PDF file makes absolutely no changes to the PDF file on disk. And even if you perform operations that would change the PDF file contents, unless you explicitly use save or save as or any other operation that prompts for where to save the PDF file, the PDF file is not modified!!!

Whatever caused your file to “shrink” as you describe it from several megabytes to 90 Kbytes had nothing to do with what you describe you did in Acrobat. Maybe your friend slipped up when saving the file when making the fix to the error that you described.

- Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)

A

Adrian27179462rko2

Participant

that is actually manifestly the wrong information. you shoudl try it yourself, my file is abt 300m, if I open in adobe it is fine, I save, it is 240, and many documents mucked up.

try67

Community Expert

When you use the Save As command in Acrobat it automatically optimizes the file. However, this process should not affect the quality of the images in it.

If it does then try this: Go to Edit - Preferences - Documents and tick off "Save As optimizes for Fast Web View".

C

charlesaspAuthor

Participant

Thanks so much for this reply. The funny this was that I didn’t actually ‘save as’ the file. I closed it down without saving after testing the edit function. The file was reduced to 90+KB when it previously would have been over a several MBs. God knows what happened but I will have to ask my friend to produce it again as the process doesn’t seem to be reversible. I had a play with another print file which was 4.2MB and un-ticked the option you told me about. I then ‘saved as’ and it seems to have preserved the file mostly as a 3.7MB file which would still be fine for printing…

Best wishes,

Charles

[Response edited to only include first name and personal information removed by Moderator]

vanoosamaroo

Participant

I'm just hopping on here 3 years later to say that I am 110% computer savvy, but new to Adobe. Adobe Acrobat does the same thing to me. I sell digital goods for a living, and quality PDFs are everything. I've noticed that if I create a PDF and save it or open it in Preview (I'm on a Mac), it creates a quality, crisp PDF. As soon as I open that bad boy in Adobe (NO saving), it looks like garbage. There is something to this... if anyone has insight, please let me know. What I'm mostly interested to know is, how do I make the PDF look crisp when viewing AND prevent it from saving a shoddy copy. Thanks.

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