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I have noticed for a few years, that if you create a PDF from Indesign or Illustrator they can be quite big (of course depending on the size and content) But what I don't understand is, that if you then extract the pages in Acrobat, the size is reduced drastically. I just one today that was 605,6 MB, and when I extracted the two pages to a new PDF, it was only 318,4 MB.
1. Does anybody know why that is? And is there a way that will mean not adding an extra step of extraction to get a smaller filesize.
2. If this is not something that can be fixed during the creation of PDF's in InDesign or Illustrator, is there a way that the extraction can be automated? It would really help to reduce the time spend on getting these lower filesizes
I hope that someone is able to help with this.
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Hi Jeroen5EBE,
Thank you for reaching out.
As mentioned above, when the page extracted from the PDF is created in Indesign or Illustrator, the size of the file changes drastically.
Would you mind sharing more details on this:
- Did you check if it happens with all the PDFs created in Indesign or Illustrator?
- When you say extracted, do you remove and delete the pages or save them as a separate file?
- Share the steps you do to extract the pages in Acrobat.
- Would it be possible to share any sample PDF so we can replicate the behavior?
We will be waiting for your response.
Thanks,
Meenakshi
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Hi Meenakshi, I appreciate the quick response from your end.
To answer your questions:
- It does happen with all files. But the increase is dependend on the content. Large sized canvasses with color photography are affected the most. Illustrations and black and white images far less.
- When extracting I select all pages, extract them into a new PDF and then overwrite the original.
- The files that I would want to share a bigger than the max that is allowed to upload. Would you have another location where I can upload these?
For now I have uploaded:
- Our exporting settings
- Screenshot of the file size before extracting
- A video of how I extract
- Screen short of the file size after extracting
I hope this will help you to see how we work and what we can/need to moving forward.
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Hi Meenakshi, did you manage to find out anything with the information that I shared?
Or is there perhaps someone in Adobe that you could refer me to for this?
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What does you see when you use "Audit space usage..." of the PDF Optimizer?
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The main difference are the bytes for images.
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What I find strange is that the size is a lot smaller, but at the same time the quality stays exactly the same. Which makes it seem like there is some additional data that does not impact the quality, but does increase the size. With the extraction that is removed. I hope that you or someone else knows if there is a way that we can remove this data, without having to do the extra step of extracting.
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"I just one today that was 605,6 MB, and when I extracted the two pages to a new PDF, it was only 318,4 MB."
This is typical of PDFs created with Illustrator and saved with the "Keep Illustrator editing features" option enabled.
It creates a hybrid file containing a PDF file + an Ai file, and when you edit it with Acrobat Pro it removes the Ai part of the file, which reduces its size by about half.
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Hi JR, thanks for your feedback. For illustrator we do uncheck the "editing features" when we create PDF, but the PDF's still are big until we extract. Our bigger problem is with InDesign. I hope that you can perhaps share some ideas on how we can reduce these InDesign PDF's, as these are the ones we do most of the time.
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Can you share your export settings? Do you use "print" or "interactive"?
Can you share a sample IDML file?