Illustrator saves files unusually large.

[carson_3956]

After updating to v29.1 version of Adobe Illustrator, the design files have become very large when saved, and I don't understand why. For example, I opened an old file that was about 500MB on an external hard drive, and when I saved it as a new file in the Documents folder, the size increased to over 4GB.

Yesterday, I was shocked when this software saved a file that reached 11GB and took about 30 minutes. As a result, my 32GB RAM is always full, constantly at 90-100% during the process. What should I do to fix this? Thank you everyone for reading!

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @carson_3956,

Thanks for sharing the details. To assist you better, could you please confirm the operating system you're using (e.g., macOS or Windows)? Also, did you notice this file size issue only after updating to Illustrator v29.1, or was it happening before as well?

Additionally, is this happening with newly created files too? If you haven't tested it yet, please try creating and saving a new file to see if the issue persists, and let us know.

Here are a few steps to help resolve this:

1. If your file includes large, high-res images, try linking instead of embedding them (File > Place > Uncheck "Embed").

2. Try saving as an AI file instead of other formats (like EPS or PDF), as these can sometimes increase file size unnecessarily.

Let me know how it goes or if you need further assistance!

Best,
Abhishek Rao

[Mohammad.Harb]

If you copy the artwork to a new document then save it as Ai, are you getting the same huge file size ?