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S
sPretzel
Inspiring
July 9, 2020
Question

Issue with PDF file size (Illustrator to PDF)

  • July 9, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 2292 views

Hi. I have an issue with the PDF file resulting from Saving an Illustrator file as PDF. I have posted in the Illustrator forum for this issue but thought that some Acrobat users might be able to give some suggestions as to what might be going on in the PDF file part of the problem. In particular, I would like to know in scenario 5 (for which a pdf file is attached in that thread), if the "hidden" objects are actually included in the PDF and justify its size or if there is nothing in the file, as Preflight indicates?

https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator/save-as-adobe-pdf-includes-quot-hidden-quot-sublayers/m-p/11275420?page=1#M184970

Thanks.

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2 replies

Dov Isaacs
Dov Isaacs
Legend
July 9, 2020

I took a look at the original file pdfsizeissue_savedaspdf.pdf. It shows a size of 645K.

 

Using the Audit Space Usage feature of the Save as Optimized PDF function reveals the following:

 

Between Document Overhead and Piece Information you have 90% of the file size. Some of the Document Overhead and virtually all the Piece Information can be readily eliminated without any loss of quality or functionality of the PDF file. Much of this overhead is the result of saving a PDF file from Illustrator using the “maintain editability” feature, which should always be turned off. Don't use a PDF file in lieu of a .AI file for the original source. 

 

I invoked the Save as Optimized PDF function with the following settings:

 

The resultant PDF file was 445K, 200K less than the original file and with no loss of functionality, layers, and/or quality.

 

The Piece Information is now gone and the Document Overhead is lower. 

 

Any other questions?

 

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
    S
    sPretzelAuthor
    Inspiring
    July 9, 2020

    Hi Dov,

    Thanks for your response. I was hoping you would see the post and take a stab at it. 🙂

    You based your analysis on the "wrong" file however. In my original post in the AI forum, I had indicated in the middle of the post in italics that I had been unable to attach the .ai file I had used to produce all the .pdf files. To get around the issue, I said I uploaded the pdfsizeissue_savedasppdf.pdf file instead, with Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities enabled, so that anyone who wants to can retrieve the corresponding .ai file and use that as a starting point. I tried again right now to upload the original .ai file but got the same error message in the forum:

    • Correct the highlighted errors and try again.
    • The attachment's pdfsizeissue.ai content type (application/postscript) does not match its file extension and has been removed.

    So if you could, please take a look at the other .pdf files or extract the .ai file from that PDF (as Kurt Gold did) and create the pdf files from it. All the other .pdf files that were attached were created with "Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilites" unchecked, as indicated in the original post.

     

    I was not familiar with Audit space usage. After reading your post, I looked at pdfsizeissue_allhidden.pdf (scenario 6) with Audit Space Usage and see that 99.54% of the file is labelled as Document Overhead. I then looked at pdfsizeissue_alltophidden.pdf (scenario 5, the most absurd result!) with Audit Space Usage and see that 88.05% is labelled as Document Overhead. But that there are some Images (6.65%), Fonts (4.93%) and other things. Last, I examined pdfsizeissue_allvisible.pdf (scenario 1) with Audit Space Usage and see almost the same percentages (6.66% Images, 4.93% Fonts etc).

    This indicates to me that, as suspected, the pdfsizeissue_alltophidden.pdf (scenario 5 which shows a blank page) does in fact include all the artwork that was hidden in Illustrator. This is not the desired outcome when Saving As Adobe PDF from the AI file in this case. Hidden layers and the objects they contain should not find their was into the PDF.

    In pdfsizeissue_allhidden.pdf, is it possible to extract or view the hidden objects? Preflight indicates there are no objects in the file but the analysis I just made here indicates that all the hidden objects are in fact in the PDF file.

     

    A
    Anonymous
    July 9, 2020

    I am having the same issue saving the pdf file in illustrator. Hope somebody answer this

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