@LaubenderI followed your instructions (thanks for the step-by-step, as I'm a bit out of my depth) and found that 98% of this magazine's weight is from the images. In other words, I was wrong to assume that keeping the text as type might have been partly responsible for the size. What I don't understand, however, is that I tried literally everything to get this filesize down. All the PDF-X formats, reducing DPI to 90, lowering image quality to LOW... nothing gets this thing under 45MB. In fact, all these changes only made it fluctuate by 1 or 2 MB in either direction. I'm guessing there's something I need to do to my layers before the export. I just assumed all the photos (which are links to PSDs in a separate folder) would be flattened and reduced at the export, but it doesn't appear to be behaving that way. Is there no simple way to just tell InDesign "flatten all pixel (photo) layers to one, crop out everything exceeding the visible canvas, and save" like you can when exporting PDFs from Photoshop? @BobLevineThe main reason was to get the filesize down (as a test) and then I got hung up on the fact that InDesign just can't do it. Turns out you were right, I was looking in the wrong place, the issue is 100% the images. @Test Screen NameYou're 100% right in most cases, but because in some rare instances I've seen the size of pamphlets reduce by flattening the entire document (and losing the vector data) I was hung up on trying it here. Mostly because I tried everything else 2x each. But Acrobat revealed it was the images all along. @Eugene TysonThat was going to be my next step, until I learned 98% of the document is the images, so the type isn't at fault. The type for the entire book barely takes up 1 MB, meaning (if I understand correctly) I should be able to reduce this document to 2-3MB in size if I'm willing to sacrifice ALL the image quality. But I can't get it under 45MB, even with all those DPI and image quality settings at ridiculously low settings. So what else could it be? I'm pretty sure I can just export the mag with NO compression and have Acrobat take it from there... but I'm trying to simplify the workflow, and I'm still learning InDesign. Shouldn't I be able to get this thing under 45MB without using other software? Most True PDF magazines out there are about 10-15MB at 110dpi (on average) with more pages than this one. I should be able to get it down to that size, right? PS: The PSDs being linked to are 600dpi and set to the same physical dimensions as the space they're filling on the page (the idea was always to lower the DPI at the export). They all have adjustment layers and FX, and some have hidden layers, but only if those hidden layers are potentially useful. Because this is mainly for online usage, I've assigned the sRGB color profile to both the ID file and the dependent PSD's. ID's Transparency Blend Space has also been set to RGB.
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