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Question

PDF files get bloated when edited on Photoshop

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
February 11, 2022
6 replies
4499 views

I often need to edit PDF documents which are actually scanned books and magazines and I need to edit certain pages in PS. I know that the correct way to do it is the following:

Open the PDF file in Acrobat > Print Production > Edit Object > Select the page you want to edit > Right click on the page and "Edit Image"

Then, I edit the page in PS and when I'm done I close the window in PS while selecting "Save Changes".

Everything works fine and there no problems besides that for some reason the size of the PDF files the pages of which I edit get really bloated in size. For example, I had a PDF file of 68 pages that was 220 MB and after editing all of its pages it became about 400 MB. Mind you that the only editing I do is slightly rotating the pages that were scanned crooked; no filters, no heavy image editing, no color adjusting etc.

For some reason PS saves the edited pages (images) in such a way that become bloated in size and as a result the size of the original PDF file is affected as well.

Has anybody else noticed this problem?

Here you could also see the procedure I follow, with the only difference that in the case of my PDF files each page is a single bitmap image: https://youtu.be/sycWVsZokCU

Windows

This topic has been closed for replies.

F

fowebe

Participant

Setting the Mode of the File back to Bitmap worked for me.
And turn off Layers at Save.

My scanned photo PDF went back down to 220 KB.

C

contactzero

Inspiring

I use the ColorSync utility in the utility folder on the Mac. It gets little fanfare but works great and strips PDFs down nicely... user defineable.

search web; ColorSync to shrink PDF file size.

Nice thing is you can use Automator and create a droplet.

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

I never work with PDF files in Photoshop. PDF is a final output file for print purposes. Depending on what all you need to edit, Acrobat Pro DC might be a better fit for working with PDF files.

Although for best results, revert to your original source document in whichever app was used to create it -- i.e. MS Word .docx, InDesign .id, Illustrator .ai, or Photoshop .psd, etc...

Make changes then Save and export it to PDF.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

Stephen Marsh

Community Expert

Hi Nancy, in this particular discussion the original file IS a PDF and Acrobat Pro is being used to edit the PDF, with the help of Photoshop to edit the raster.

What you mention is of course best practice for workflows such as a PDF from say InDesign, but does not apply in the case of a document scanner producing a multi-page PDF which then requires one or more pages to be modified.

Horses for courses!

jane-e

Community Expert

@Tommy J. wrote:

I often need to edit PDF documents which are actually scanned books and magazines and I need to edit certain pages in PS. I know that the correct way to do it is the following:

The correct way to edit a PDF (Portable Document Format) is to open the original source file, make the edits, then generate a new PDF.

Since your PDF is from scans, if you still have the original scans you can edit those in Photoshop and make a new PDF.

As for a "bloated" PDF, try using one or more of these to reduce the file size:

File > Save as
File > Save as Other > Reduced File Size (save in a newer version)
File > Save as Other > Optimized PDF (first click Audit Space Usage to see where the size is coming from)
https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/optimizing-pdfs-acrobat-pro.html

Jane

Stephen Marsh

Community Expert

@jane-e wrote:

The correct way to edit a PDF (Portable Document Format) is to open the original source file, make the edits, then generate a new PDF.

Hi Jane, in my experience, many document scanners can scan directly to PDF. This often creates the smallest file size vs. quality for multi-page single document scans. So in these cases, the original source file is a PDF.

Stephen Marsh

Community Expert

This is exactly the case here.

I only have the PDF files to work with and I also need to edit a large number of pages in each file, therefore it would be pretty burdensome to generate a new PDF using the "Save as" option after each page I edit. 😞

@Tommy J. wrote:

This is exactly the case here.

I only have the PDF files to work with and I also need to edit a large number of pages in each file, therefore it would be pretty burdensome to generate a new PDF using the "Save as" option after each page I edit. 😞

I meant to use save as to overwrite the edited file, however it would be more noticable to compare the file size difference if you produced a separate file.

Stephen Marsh

Community Expert

PDF files (also InDesign and PageMaker files) often need to have the "Save As" command applied in order to "tidy them up" and restructure the data in an optimised state after editing. This is a housekeeping step outside of compression.

I have had this problem too. It would appear that the PDF library used by the OEM document scanners to create multi-page PDF files does a much better job at reducing file size/retaining quality than offered in Photoshop, or Acrobat Pro for that matter. Various Adobe apps should be able to create a comparable result, however, I have not found the right combination of settings to do so.

Chris 486

Community Expert

Hi Tommy!

Part of this will depend on:
1.) How your PDF was originally scanned and compressed.
2.) How you are making edits in Photoshop.

Photoshop will save your edited file as a flattened pdf in the color mode you selected to edit in photoshop. But it won't try to compress the files you edited to match your original PDF. This can make the file size jump due to that lack of compression on the edited content. Using the "Compress PDF" after making all your edits will usually re-conform your compression pretty close to the original file size.

Hopefully that helps!

Tommy J.Author

Known Participant

Thank you for the reply Chris.

By following the process I described above you don't get the "Save" window which among other options also has the "Compress PDF" option. After the edititing in PS is over you just close the file and the editted paged is immediately replaced in the PDF file that is opened in Acrobat (therefore you don't get a "Save as" window). Now, when you save the editted PDF file in Acrobat that's when the bloating occurs.

Here's another user who encountered the same problem: https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/editing-image-in-pdf-seems-to-cause-file-size-bloating/m-p/10239042

Chris 486

Community Expert

Hi Tommy,

I apologize. My instructions were not as clear as I thought. The "compress file" option is in Acrobat after you've made changes and closed PS.

Jane-e's comments below also provide other options to shrink the file size again. Let us know if you are able to use those feautres to reduce your file size.

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