Metadata Bloat - Abnormally large PSD files when I save them

[greg.biro]

Hi, I updated to the latest version of PS last week, and ever since my PSD files have been huge when saved. Files that have been around 7-10 mb are now a 100. It's really annoying, and for some reason the scripts event manager is not helping me so I have to manually do this with every file before saving.

File Info dialog is slow to open, freezes, or cannot display raw metadata

This never happened to me before, but it's definitely not fixed..

I'm working on Mac OS 10.15.5 with the 21.2.0 release of Photoshop 

[JJMack · Accepted solution]

See if this script helps.

function deleteDocumentAncestorsMetadata() {  
    whatApp = String(app.name);//String version of the app name  
    if(whatApp.search("Photoshop") > 0)  { //Check for photoshop specifically, or this will cause errors  
        //Function Scrubs Document Ancestors from Files  
        if(!documents.length) {  
        alert("There are no open documents. Please open a file to run this script.")  
        return;   
        }  
        if (ExternalObject.AdobeXMPScript == undefined) ExternalObject.AdobeXMPScript = new ExternalObject("lib:AdobeXMPScript");   
        var xmp = new XMPMeta( activeDocument.xmpMetadata.rawData);   
        // Begone foul Document Ancestors!  
            xmp.deleteProperty(XMPConst.NS_PHOTOSHOP, "DocumentAncestors");  
            app.activeDocument.xmpMetadata.rawData = xmp.serialize();  
         }  
}  
//Now run the function to remove the document ancestors  
deleteDocumentAncestorsMetadata(); 

[greg.biro]

Thanks, I managed to integrate this one with the event manager.

[hiteshs72260158]

Hi, how to use this script. I am facing simiar issue

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

Instructions here:

Downloading and Installing Adobe Scripts

[mikep35929273]

If anyone was confused by this like I was, this explains how to do it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epgGg-reKWg

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

More here:

Metadata Bloat – photoshop:DocumentAncestors

[katielady1]

I also just wanted to chime in to stay that I had this exact same issue. In my case it was happening with some transparent png files. I was exporting low-res pdfs from InDesign with the placed pngs and my files were huge! I was able to fix it by just copy and pasting into a new file in photoshop. Resaved the new file (as png or as psd, both worked) and updated the InDesign links and all is good again. My low-res exported pdf page went from like 9MB to 126kb!

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

@katielady1 – That is great for you!

My experience is that for most people:

1) Copy/paste to a new file usually copies metadata over to the new file, so nothing is gained

2) Once the bloated metadata is in the InDesign file the layout file also becomes bloated and one has to perform a save as to force the updated clean files reduced metadata to be cleaned from the layout.