Publisher file size

[bluegreen]

I’ve been creating small test documents to compare the size of CS6 InDesign documents to Affinity Publisher 1.10 documents. I’m working on Windows 10. In all the tests, I am linking the assets rather than embedding. When I place JPGs or PNGs the Publisher files are smaller than the InDesign files. Yay! But when I place PDFs the Publisher file is significantly larger than the InDesign file. On the order of 4-5 times larger!! Which quickly becomes a problem because of huge file sizes. The PDFs are set to PDF Passthrough.

Does anyone have any idea what’s going on? Or what I can do to keep files to a reasonable size? I’m regularly faced with Publisher files over 100 MB which become hard to work with. Help!

[joe_l]

14 hours ago, bluegreen said:

Does anyone have any idea what’s going on?

Same here. Empty file = 1,72 MB. Placed (linked) a 1,14 MB Multipage-PDF (8 pages) and saved, ended up in 15 MB. Placed (linked) a 1,67 MB Singlepage-PDF and saved, ended up in 1,8 MB. It feels like the 8 page PDF is placed 8 times. Sounds familiar to me. A regression? Best would be to post your observation in the APublisher for Windows bug forum.

[Old Bruce]

If you have to work with placing PDF files that require several pages could you not just open the PDF and export the individual pages to be used in your final Publisher file? If you need pages 5, 7 and 12 export them and then import those three files. If you need pages 8 thru 27 then try using Add Pages from File...

[bluegreen]

In my situation, I'm just importing single page PDFs.

[Dan C]

When using 'Passthrough' for PDF documents, Affinity will generate a Bitmap preview of the PDF and render this in your document, so you are essentially adding Pixel data to the Publisher document, as the PDF file is not being parsed in the same way it would be when in 'Interpret' mode.

Pixel data requires more 'space' than vector objects, and having one PDF document placed multiple times in 'passthrough' mode will have to render each page as a separate pixel object, hence the increase in file size.

We're always looking for ways to improve the app and we do hope to reduce the memory footprint that passthrough can require, I'll be sure to add a 'vote' to or internal development improvement log regarding this for you

[joe_l]

11 minutes ago, Dan C said:

Pixel data requires more 'space' than vector objects, and having one PDF document placed multiple times in 'passthrough' mode will have to render each page as a separate pixel object, hence the increase in file size.

I understand, but in my case the multipage PDF was only placed ONCE!

[Dan C]

Thanks for confirming - when placing the PDF document in Publisher, if it is multiple pages long then a Bitmap has to be generated for each page, as the context toolbar allows you to select which page of the PDF is being displayed in passthrough mode.

As above, our devs are looking at ways to improve this in the future, but currently a bitmap for each page is generated and saved so that you can quickly swap between the visible page at any time

[bluegreen]

Thanks, Dan C. That's a helpful clarification. We have been using PDF Passthrough for architectural drawings with the idea that the quality of the drawing (particularly the quality and thickness of lines) would be negatively impacted if we don't use Passthrough. Do you think that's an accurate assessment? All the documentation about PDF Passthrough seems to focus on the integrity of fonts.

[Pšenda]

19 minutes ago, Dan C said:

when placing the PDF document in Publisher, if it is multiple pages long then a Bitmap has to be generated for each page

Maybe it would be enough to allow the selection of used pages for Place command as it is with the Open command.

P.S. Alternatively, users who need to reduce the file size could edit the PDF document for Place command - Open with a selection of the necessary pages, and save them in a working / reduced PDF.

[Dan C]

1 hour ago, bluegreen said:

We have been using PDF Passthrough for architectural drawings with the idea that the quality of the drawing (particularly the quality and thickness of lines) would be negatively impacted if we don't use Passthrough. Do you think that's an accurate assessment?

Using either PDF mode should not negatively affect the quality of the placed document, but one thing to keep in mind is that Passthrough is always displaying a bitmap version of the file (which can't be infinitely scaled without quality loss), whereas when the PDF is interpreted, any compatible vector objects will remain vector, rather than being a bitmap.

This means that you could technically scale a PDF to a larger degree when interpret is used, however you may then run into compatibility issues with the PDF file, such as missing or unsupported fonts.

Passthrough is usually used to guarantee the PDF fidelity is retained to be as close as possible to the exported file. Interpret will attempt to keep the PDF as close to the original, but will also convert the PDF layers into editable layers in Affinity and this can sometimes cause visual differences for the reasons mentioned above.

As mentioned however, you shouldn't negatively affect the quality of the placed PDF when using Passthrough, especially if the PDF is placed at 100% of it's actual size