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AbobeIT
Participant
October 9, 2018
Answered

Change Acrobat default save options for Optimize PDF

  • October 9, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 2276 views

My client is reporting that PDF's saved since the last update have increased in size, sometimes 4x larger. If they choose "Optimize PDF" under the "Save As" option the file size is expected. I cannot find a way to have this optimize PDF setting as a default for all new PDF saves.

1, Is there any known issues with increased size after an update?

2. Is there a way to set Acrobat so all PDF's saved are optimized?

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Dov Isaacs

On behalf of Adobe:

No change has been made to the code within Acrobat for saving PDF files since the last update. Note that Save is very different from Save as. The save operation can potentially increase your PDF file size if you have modified pages in the file. The modified pages are appended to the original file and the area used by those pages in the file are invalidated. Depending upon how many changes you have made in the PDF file, this could add significant size to your PDF file, but this has been the case with Acrobat all along! In other words, with the simple save, you may see no file size change or a significant increase in file size. With Save as (not using the Save as Other => Optimized PDF) the resultant changed file will have any file size increase or decrease directly related to the actual changes (if any) themselves with no space wasted from invalidated page storage.

As Aandi Inston indicated above, no the standard Save or even Save as can not be set to use any optimization settings since many of these settings are lossy. You can set defaults for Optimization but you can only invoke the optimization via Save as Other => Optimized PDF.

          - Dov

2 replies

Dov Isaacs
Dov IsaacsCorrect answer
Legend
October 10, 2018

On behalf of Adobe:

No change has been made to the code within Acrobat for saving PDF files since the last update. Note that Save is very different from Save as. The save operation can potentially increase your PDF file size if you have modified pages in the file. The modified pages are appended to the original file and the area used by those pages in the file are invalidated. Depending upon how many changes you have made in the PDF file, this could add significant size to your PDF file, but this has been the case with Acrobat all along! In other words, with the simple save, you may see no file size change or a significant increase in file size. With Save as (not using the Save as Other => Optimized PDF) the resultant changed file will have any file size increase or decrease directly related to the actual changes (if any) themselves with no space wasted from invalidated page storage.

As Aandi Inston indicated above, no the standard Save or even Save as can not be set to use any optimization settings since many of these settings are lossy. You can set defaults for Optimization but you can only invoke the optimization via Save as Other => Optimized PDF.

          - Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
Legend
October 9, 2018

1. I don’t recall seeing another report.

2. No, for good reason. Each optimise can degrade quality so it should be done only once, at the end.