Super freaking HUGE Photoshop files!! What is wrong with PSD???

[atomiko]

Im a designer and  use Photoshop 90% of the time, for the last couple of years i have ended u with super gargantuan files - png or jpg for a simple business card - most sites where i have to upload them have a 10-15 mb limit and these files that PSDis producing are  over 90 to 140 mb for a simple bcard design - if i cant get them under the limit size what ami supposed to do with these garbage files that garbage PSD is producing?  Im paying for reliable software not this junk.  Any help with getting NORMAL file sizes in PSD would be greatly appreciated it.  

Thanks

[TheDigitalDog]

If you strip all the metadata out of those documents, do you see the size significantly reduced? 

One way to do this: open the document (flattened, which would be the case for JPEGs or PNGs)

Select All, copy. 

Make new document, size of clipboard.

Paste. 

Save. 

Is the size much smaller? 

[D Fosse]

Most likely it's DocumentAncestors metadata. This is forensic metadata that contains a full record of all copy/paste operations among other things. So it follows along if you copy into a new file, that's part of its purpose.

Ancestors metadata can grow to really huge sizes over time, if a file is reused, recycled or shared like e.g. a template.

Export or Save For Web will both strip this metadata out. There are also scripts that will remove it. I know @Stephen_A_Marsh has one, he will probably come along.

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

One way to check for photoshop:DocumentAncestors metadata is to use File > File Info > Raw Data:

You can also use the Find command in Adobe Bridge using All Metadata or a Photoshop script:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MarshySwamp/Document_Ancestors_Alert/main/Document-Ancestors-Alert...

As previously mentioned in this topic, Export As or Export > Save for Web (Legacy) will strip this metadata. Copy+paste doesn't remove this specific metadata, however, selecting all layers and duplicating the layers to a new doc does.

There are many other options to remove this metadata covered in my blog entry:

https://prepression.blogspot.com/2017/06/metadata-bloat-photoshopdocumentancestors.html