Flattened Indesign PDF with .ai Artwork?

Report · Oct 15, 2019

Hi there,

I'm currently working with an InDesign document that uses linked .ai files throughout its 10 pages. These are consistently updated by our design team which is great as InDesign constantly updates the links within the document template. I then need to save this document as an updated pdf each time there are changes made.

I'm trying to export the document as a relatively small but high quality pdf (under 15MB) to be able to send via email to our accounts. Unfortunately, every PDF export format for InDesign (Adobe Acrobat 4 PDF, Smallest File Size, etc.) results in a pdf that's around 60MB with the .ai artwork still fully editable down to little details in the prints. I've made sure the 'Create Adobe Layers' box is unticked everytime and have tried a bunch of different export options to try and get the program to flatten the artwork but nothing seems to be working.

Right now the only solution I can find is exporting each page as a png and then combining into a pdf with an online converter. While this results in a high qaulity .pdf that's around 11MB, it is taking forever. I'm trying to move my team from Illustrator to InDesign for our presentations but I need to find a way to directly flatten the .ai artwork and export to a reasonably sized pdf from InDesign.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!

Report · Oct 15, 2019

Have you tried merging/flattening the layers in the Layer panel? This would leave you with one remaining layer and reduce the file size. (Every layer increases the size of the file.)

Report · Oct 15, 2019

Flatten will only work if it's interacting with transparency.

You could probably force the images through the flattener settings by setting the AI images to 99.9% transparency.

Report · Oct 15, 2019

"Flatten will only work if it's interacting with transparency."

You're right, but that's a different flattening than when we're talking about layers in InDesign, Illustrator, etc. In this case, flattening a graphics file means the content that is spread across two or more separate layers will be combined into one layer. Transparency doesn't come into play in this case.

Report · Oct 16, 2019

But your file size isn't down to the layers - it's down to the vector elements in the .ai - which is causing the size of the file.