This is true insanity or just apathy on the part of the respective Adobe teams... here's my example:
5"x5" web banner saved as .ai, once packaged makes a 32.3meg folder (link folder is 103k, font folder is 2.6mb, .ai file is 29.6 megs! How is this possible? How can a 5"x 5" ai file with a 106k png placed in turn into a 29.6 ai???
It gets better... save that same file a default .pdf and it's 28.7mb, save it as Press Ready and it's 14.4mb, save its as X-4:2008 and it's finally at a reasonable 771kb.
So let me understand this from an Adobe Corp point of view: When saving a file as an .ai file lets make file ballon up to slightly more than 10x the combination of every thing in the file... plus lets have our DEFAULT PDF size at 2x the size of a PRESS READY file, 31x the size of a X-4:2008 format. Folks, this is a web banner that saves out to 92kb when saved as jpeg. It should be, at most, 2mbs. And yes I know I can save the file with "Save as pdf compatible" but that only brings it down to 15.2mb and I know for sure that the next time I open the file it will only save as a text-only no-image worthless-unusable pdf until I quit and restart Illustrator... which i don't have the time to do 35 times a day.
This is insanity. I've been using .ai since early 1989, and I can't recall being more disappointed. I recently saved an 8-artboard project and it was 1.3gbs... although the total content placed on that 8 artboards was a mere 113mb. STORAGE SPACE and TIME TO SAVE FILES is not unlimited out here! I can't save documents as often as I used to because the time to save is taking so long. I can't use the default pdf setting because it contains out-of-this-universe-Tim-Burton-Nightmare settings and makes pdfs that are too large to email!!!!!! Type the letters PDF and on a blank page and save to default pdf settings and its 759k! For three letters???
I'm pretty sure that no-one at Adobe has ever been in the environment that I have survived for the last 28 years... 12-16 hours days, always trying to go as fast as possible, very few breaks, and completing upwards of 40 projects a day. So maybe it's just Adobe Corp being blind to the fact that out here in the real world we are all not working at a leisurely pace, doing one brochure within 10 days at a giant agency, and putting in a 8 hour day with a lunch and smoke breaks. We are in a hurry, time is short, and we need reasonable and appropriate save-settings so we can make deadlines.
[Moderator: moved from non-technical forum Lounge to Illustrator.]
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