How to reduce the file size of PDFs exported from InDesign?

Email is not the ideal carrier for large files like multipage PDFs.

Picture this: for Press Quality prints, the PDF of one A4 size page, covered half by imagery, might weigh about 2 MB. For on-screen viewing you could opt for the Smallest File Size option, which drops its size to maybe a tenth by lowering the image's pixels quantity and quality drastically. But then again, your catalogue is still 42 pages. You do the math...

The best and rigorous solution is to start using InDesign's Publish Online feature, and share a link (perhaps accompanied with an image of the cover) in the email, in stead of the whole PDF file itself. This feature also offers the viewers an option to download the PDF after all.

If it's just images, try exporting again from InDesign with lower ppi (resolution). InDesign can automatically lower image resolution.

WeTransfer is a good one to send big files. I also am using http://mailbigfile.com a lot lately, also free up to 2 GB and easy to use.

If you are sending the native InDesign file, Package it up with all placed images, links and used fonts. You can do that in InDesign via Preflight. You can also use a stand-alone preflight and packaging tool like our FlightCheck - that will even compress the job folder for you into a .zip archive. Very handy. Then just drop it on WeTransfer or MailBigFile.

Friendly Regards,
David DillingMarkzware

These are two apps for sending large files to customers etc, no doubt there are others that forum members will recommend:

https://acrobat.adobe.com/uk/en/acrobat/how-to/share-pdf-online.html

https://wetransfer.com

You can send an email with a link in it. This is the normal thing: nobody would expect a prepress file in the email itself, no real world designs will fit! Also email can damage files. If you don't have a favourite service for sending files try http://www.wetransfer.com/

260 MB for a (presumably full color) catalogue is not big at all. I've created plain text books that large! (Thick books. But still.)

From within InDesign, you can only make a significant cut in size by radically downsampling bitmap images and saving them as JPEG, rather than None (uncompressed, *ugh*!) or ZIP. But if you do not have that much (large) images, then its impact is small.

So, further realistic options, off the top of my head:

1. Inspect the PDF with Acrobat Pro. It can tell you where all the data went, and has a few more options to slim it down. Note that if it says "yeah well you actually got 259.9MB of text data" then that's pretty much a fact. You cannot compress any further that which is already compressed.

2. Save your document as separate JPEGs instead of PDF. If this suffers more in quality than you (or your client) are prepared for -- be realistic, it's a JPEG! -- then open your PDF in Photoshop and use that to downsample and compress. It might be marginally better.

3. Be Staunchly Realistic to your client and tell the truth: that the content of the PDF cannot be compressed any more, and the only way to make the file smaller is to delete items.