muelli75 Posted June 11, 2021 Share Posted June 11, 2021 Hi! I do a Datamerge for printing an adress on the backside of a postcard. I placed the original PDF on two masterpages in Publisher 1.9.4 1082. The PDF-File is set to "passthrough". After generating the Publisherfile of 1.688 adresses (very quick ) - I stunned. After the datamerge the exported PDF with 3376 Pages have 3.7 GigaByte. Doing the same procedure in InDesign, the result ist 6 MegaByte. OK, for sure this is because of the PDF-Feature XObjects which APublisher do not support? Serif, please please take it on your ToDo-List ... its important (not only to us). Regards, Martin Quote Regards, Martin iMac 27", 2017/Big Sur 11.2.2 MacMini M1/BigSur 11.2.2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Dan C Posted June 14, 2021 Staff Share Posted June 14, 2021 Hi @muelli75, Sorry to hear you're having trouble! On 6/11/2021 at 6:05 PM, muelli75 said: After the datamerge the exported PDF with 3376 Pages have 3.7 GigaByte. Depending on how the document has been exported, with over 3000 pages I am not entirely surprised at this export size, however it's certainly interesting that the InDesign PDF is so small. Could you please provide a copy of the Affinity Publisher document to the below link for me, so I can look into this further for you? https://www.dropbox.com/request/2qMbhdVR7EpYQ7qGEzg2 Once uploaded, please reply here to let me know - many thanks in advance! Quote Please note - I am currently out of the office for a short while whilst recovering from surgery (nothing serious!), therefore will not be available on the Forums during this time. Should you require a response from the team in a thread I have previously replied in - please Create a New Thread and our team will be sure to reply as soon as possible. Many thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muelli75 Posted June 14, 2021 Author Share Posted June 14, 2021 Hi! Thanks for this quick response - the upload is done. Please reply if any further actions are needed. The upload contains: Original PDF from our cutsomer Excel-File with addresses the Publisher-file from which we generate the personalized document the personalized Publisher-file Quote Regards, Martin iMac 27", 2017/Big Sur 11.2.2 MacMini M1/BigSur 11.2.2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Dan C Posted June 14, 2021 Staff Share Posted June 14, 2021 Thanks for the file! I can see the PDF being generated on my end from Publisher is a similar size, around 3.7GB. I'd like to request a copy of the PDF that has been generated from InDesign, as I am interested as to how this file size is so small comparatively. Could you please also provide a copy of this for me, alongside a screenshot of your export settings from ID? Quote Please note - I am currently out of the office for a short while whilst recovering from surgery (nothing serious!), therefore will not be available on the Forums during this time. Should you require a response from the team in a thread I have previously replied in - please Create a New Thread and our team will be sure to reply as soon as possible. Many thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muelli75 Posted June 14, 2021 Author Share Posted June 14, 2021 Uploads of the INDD-PDF and the screenshots are done. A small hint to our workflow in INDD: In previous versions of INDD, you have to place the "Original"-PDF on the masterpages. If you placed the original pdf on page 1 + 2 and do then a datamerge, the exported pdf was as big as now in Publisher. In the meantime, it does not matter whether the PDFs are placed on the sample page or on the regular pages. Fixx and Dan C 1 1 Quote Regards, Martin iMac 27", 2017/Big Sur 11.2.2 MacMini M1/BigSur 11.2.2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomaso Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 On 6/11/2021 at 7:05 PM, muelli75 said: (…) 3.7 GigaByte. Doing the same procedure in InDesign, the result ist 6 MegaByte. OK, for sure this is because of the PDF-Feature XObjects which APublisher do not support? 3 hours ago, Dan C said: I am interested as to how this file size is so small comparatively. Though generally both (ID & APub) PDFs may contain Form-X-Objects, it seems that ID and Affinity handle multiple instances of identical items (images, color profiles) quite differently. In a quick comparison Affinity seems to embed on PDF export multiple copies of a resource – whereas ID seems to embed it only once + referring to it for further use inside its exported PDF. (ID-PDF: 0.85 MB | APub-PDF: 6 MB) id placed pdf.pdf - id placed pdf.idml_apub.pdf Also here their native document sizes differ a lot (ID: 1.1 MB | APub: 33.8 MB) The .afpub was created by opening the .idml. The content resource is a linked 1-page PDF with 0.75 MB, linked in both layout documents. Dan C 1 Quote macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wonderings Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 4 hours ago, Dan C said: Hi @muelli75, Sorry to hear you're having trouble! Depending on how the document has been exported, with over 3000 pages I am not entirely surprised at this export size, however it's certainly interesting that the InDesign PDF is so small. Could you please provide a copy of the Affinity Publisher document to the below link for me, so I can look into this further for you? https://www.dropbox.com/request/2qMbhdVR7EpYQ7qGEzg2 Once uploaded, please reply here to let me know - many thanks in advance! I would be very surprised at the size with anything from Indesign unless it had some massive linked files. 3,000 records is not all that big. I have regular ones that around 10,000+ records. Merged PDF file is usually under 20mb. That is a far cry from 3.7 gigs. Again it is hard to compare without seeing the artwork but I am not sure I have ever had a merged file hit that size limit for postcards and things of that nature. I checked another merged file I recently did, 18,000+ pages, large image, 8.5 x 11 and the file is 26 mb. There must be something Adobe is doing differently to get these much more manageable files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Dan C Posted June 15, 2021 Staff Share Posted June 15, 2021 22 hours ago, thomaso said: In a quick comparison Affinity seems to embed on PDF export multiple copies of a resource – whereas ID seems to embed it only once + referring to it for further use inside its exported PDF. (ID-PDF: 0.85 MB | APub-PDF: 6 MB) Thank you for this information, it's certainly helpful to my understanding and was not something I was aware of! As far as I'm aware, the PDF size from Publisher is caused by the above, as we're unable to 'refer' to embedded files when writing our PDFs currently. I am logging this with our developers, not only as an improvement suggestion but also as a potential issue, due to the size difference between the apps. Unfortunately all steps I've taken to try and reduce the PDF size in Affinity have not thus far been fruitful, especially not to the level that InDesign is able to produce currently, my apologies. I hope this helps clear things up muelli75 1 Quote Please note - I am currently out of the office for a short while whilst recovering from surgery (nothing serious!), therefore will not be available on the Forums during this time. Should you require a response from the team in a thread I have previously replied in - please Create a New Thread and our team will be sure to reply as soon as possible. Many thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomaso Posted June 15, 2021 Share Posted June 15, 2021 @Dan C, beyond PDF size also the native file size varies a lot between Apub and ID – maybe this influences an inability for referring content already? Also possibly interesting maybe a memory analysis of both PDF, here a comparison by Acrobat (file > optimise >> memory): Note the APub export creates less memory for Page content (Seiteninhalt) and Fonts (Schriften) while the entry for Referring Table (Querverweistabelle) isn't listed at all. muelli75 and Dan C 1 1 Quote macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Dan C Posted June 24, 2021 Staff Share Posted June 24, 2021 @muelli75 Thanks for your help in reporting this issue, I'm happy to confirm that changes have been made to the latest Publisher beta (1.10.0.1098) to resolve this issue - using your document in the beta version the exported PDF using the (for export) preset is now 48MB, which is a drastically reduced size from over 3GB! Please find the latest betas linked below, should you wish to test this for yourself - Windows - Mac - I hope this helps Quote Please note - I am currently out of the office for a short while whilst recovering from surgery (nothing serious!), therefore will not be available on the Forums during this time. Should you require a response from the team in a thread I have previously replied in - please Create a New Thread and our team will be sure to reply as soon as possible. Many thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muelli75 Posted June 24, 2021 Author Share Posted June 24, 2021 thank you so much! Dan C 1 Quote Regards, Martin iMac 27", 2017/Big Sur 11.2.2 MacMini M1/BigSur 11.2.2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Dan C Posted June 25, 2021 Staff Share Posted June 25, 2021 This topic has been continued here, in regards to the latest beta version - Our QA team should reply there in due course lacerto 1 Quote Please note - I am currently out of the office for a short while whilst recovering from surgery (nothing serious!), therefore will not be available on the Forums during this time. Should you require a response from the team in a thread I have previously replied in - please Create a New Thread and our team will be sure to reply as soon as possible. Many thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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