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Is there a way to export reasonably sized PDF's in XD?

Community Beginner ,
Feb 20, 2018 Feb 20, 2018

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I am doing fairly simple long page layouts. Example size would be about 1920x5000 pixels. The PDF exports, although very crisp and stable, are super-huge. The example here is about 45MB. I really like the quality of the exports, but it is a pain to bring them into PS to resize and get down to manageable size. Any ideas?

 

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Adobe Employee , Feb 20, 2018 Feb 20, 2018

If you have Acrobat Pro, can you try reducing the size of your PDF files using these options?

Optimizing PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Pro

I see a feature request similar to what you have posted. You can vote for it using this link for the team to prioritize it.

PDF Export - compression options to reduce file size – Adobe XD Feedback : Feature Requests & Bugs

Thanks,

Preran

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Adobe Employee ,
Feb 20, 2018 Feb 20, 2018

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If you have Acrobat Pro, can you try reducing the size of your PDF files using these options?

Optimizing PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Pro

I see a feature request similar to what you have posted. You can vote for it using this link for the team to prioritize it.

PDF Export - compression options to reduce file size – Adobe XD Feedback : Feature Requests & Bugs

Thanks,

Preran

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 20, 2018 Feb 20, 2018

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Thank you. I will try this and report back.

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 11, 2018 Dec 11, 2018

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This is not an answer or solution to this problem.

Sure another thread exists that many of us have voted on, but it doesn't solve the very real problems we have with PDF size right now.

Acrobat Pro Canon reduce PDF files created with Adobe XD. It doesn't work.

I have a 30MB PDF from a 12 page XD Document, and it is impossible to compress. Even when I use Acrobat DC (Pro) to optimize the file there is never any compression in file size. I can reduce the images to 12ppi with low jpg compression and the output PDF you cannot even visibly see any of the images because they are so compressed, but the final file size is still 30MB.

This is a very real bug, that adobe is ignoring. We can't wait until 30 versions from now.

This should be fixed immediately.

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 19, 2022 Oct 19, 2022

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Thank you for addressing it. It is a big problem in my team. 

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 19, 2022 Oct 19, 2022

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Did not work for me. 

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Explorer ,
Jun 20, 2018 Jun 20, 2018

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So I had an old school idea to fix this problem, and it worked! I had a six-page XD file that I exported to a PDF, it was 25MB far too large.

So I opened the PDF in Acrobat and choose Print>Adobe PDF, for page size I selected "choose paper size by PDF page size", and "Use Custom paper size when needed".

I then went to Properties and Choose High-Quality PDF, and on the Advanced Tab of the Print Dialogue box, I went to color management and selected "Same as Source (No Color Management)". Check "Print to File."

One small addition in the properties when you Select High-Quality Print, be sure to uncheck "Rely on system fonts only..."

It creates a .ps file, simply double-click to create your PDF (be sure to reselect High-Quality Print).

Anyway worked beautifully, my 25MB file went down to 2.1MB Enjoy!

2018-06-20_14-19-51.png

2018-06-20_14-20-32.png

2018-06-20_14-23-45.png

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New Here ,
Jul 23, 2019 Jul 23, 2019

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Thank you for posting this, so so helpful! I just got a 125mb file down to around 25mb with no loss in quality

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Community Beginner ,
Nov 13, 2019 Nov 13, 2019

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On a Mac with Acrobat Pro DC, to follow pplschmp2 's general workflow, as you can't print a pdf from the pdf print dialogue box:

 

Save as > format > postscript

Open .ps file with Acrobat Distiller

 

My first file went from 70.2mb to 3.4mb with this method. 

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New Here ,
Aug 16, 2020 Aug 16, 2020

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This didn't work for me, tried all your solutions, a two page web file went from 11.4mb to 10.9mb, not worth the effort. Adobe really need to fix this issue. Tried to "reduce file size" and "optimise file" with no chagne to file size. 

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Adobe Employee ,
Aug 18, 2020 Aug 18, 2020

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Hi Catherin,

 

Sorry to hear about the trouble. We can surely test this on our end so will it be possible for you to share a sample file with us? I'd also need the details like the version of XD and the Operating System.

 

To share the file, you can add the file to shared storage and you can share the link through DM. To send the DM, please click on my name and while sending a DM, please add this discussion link in the subject.

 

Regards

Rishabh 

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New Here ,
May 19, 2022 May 19, 2022

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Still has this problem and easy to replicate.

 

Just create artboards of 1920 x 1080 and shove a load of 300dpi iStock photos on each artboard.When you export as a PDF, it will be huge as it's storing the original sized photos even if scaled down on the artboard. No issue with that, it's when you then try to use any optimisation in Acrobat Pro e.g scale down images to 72dpi, the file stays the same size, bar a few kb knocked off.

 

I can only guess that Acrobat Pro thinks the photos are already 72dpi and doesn't downsample them.

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New Here ,
May 20, 2022 May 20, 2022

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I have a workaround.

 

  1. Open up the PDF in Illustrator (remember to Select All pages).
  2. Select all (Ctrl +A) and then select Embed. 
  3. Select Save a Copy, select PDF from Save as type.
  4. You can either choose a Adobe PDF Preset or do below:
  5. In General, unselect 'Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities' to save on save
  6. In Compression select Image Quality to something like Low and Downsample to something like 100 pp for images above 150 ppi. You can play with these settings.
  7. Output, set Color Conversion to 'No conversion'
  8. Save Adobe PDF preset if you're happy with it so you don't have to keep doing them.
  9. Save PDF

 

 

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New Here ,
Aug 31, 2022 Aug 31, 2022

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New Here ,
Feb 02, 2023 Feb 02, 2023

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That link did not work. I dragged my 23mb pdf onto the site and selected High Compression, which estimated the reduced file size to about 7mb. It said the file was successfully converted, but the result was a 21.3mb file.

Adobe MUST fix this in XD!!!

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Adobe Employee ,
Feb 08, 2023 Feb 08, 2023

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Hi @Chris22179530p8au ,


Sorry to hear about the trouble. Let me assure you I'll share your feedback with the team, and you can do that too by voting for the request shared in this similar discussion.

 

Regards

Rishabh 

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Explorer ,
Aug 17, 2023 Aug 17, 2023

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This is STILL amazingly terrible. Not all clients want prototypes. They want PDFs,  and I can't send them 60mb files. You'd think Adobe would be able to able to export a reasonably sized PDF from XD at this point. 

Also none of the "solutions" in this thread work. Opening Acrobat and "compressing" doesn't do anything. 

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New Here ,
Oct 12, 2023 Oct 12, 2023

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Totally agree!! This is quite frustrating. 

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New Here ,
Oct 19, 2023 Oct 19, 2023

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A frustrating and utterly ridiculous problem. Never seen anything so unusable. Anyway, I went to the old school fix - export your artboards as JPEGS and then use the JPEG's to Create a PDF in Acrobat by selecting the Multiple Files option. I know it's digital first as an application but clearly this needs a fix. 

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New Here ,
Mar 25, 2024 Mar 25, 2024

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Only 6 years on but thought I would mention you can export as JPG or PNG then just open them in Acrobat and resave as a PDF. File size is 3x smaller. You can do a batch too by just selecting all the images and dragging into acrobat.

 

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