issue exporting to PDF

[JanFortune]

I use Affinity to layout two types of books -- poetry collections and novels -- running an indie small publishing house. The poetry collections are so far fine. Every time I try to export a novel file from affinity to PDF it takes ages and comes out enormous -- latest is 174 MB -- unusable to send to the printers. My work around has been to put the file on a stick, give ti to my partner and his affinity doesn't have this glitch and exports the same file to a PDF of always well under 1 MB. But now his copy of Affinity has started to do the same thing leaving us with no way to export the books into the version needed to get them printed. This is essentially business ruining unless we go to other software. Really love working on Affinity but this is a major issue for us.

Thanks for any help

Jan

[AdamCP]

Just to add to my partner's post above: we're running version 1.10.4 of Publisher, Jan's on a MacBookPro running Catalina (10.15.7), mine on an iMac (running Sierra 10.12.6). The files we're exporting are black and white text with the imprint logo as the only graphic. The exports are done using the dialog box defaults (so for PDF (for print) to send proof copies to authors). The Publisher files we're exporting are usually around 800-900KB. Export has always produced large file size's on Jan's installation. It did on mine when I first moved to Publisher and then stopped for no apparent reason between one export and the next and hasn't given any trouble until today (so that would be for the last two years) when it's begun behaving in the same way as Jan's. In the past, I've tried redoing layouts from scratch and that sometimes helps. As an experiment, I tried today's exports on my old MacBookAir (Mac OS 10.9.5 but still Publisher 1.10.4) and a layout that had exported on my and Jan's computers at 254MB exported at 1.7MB — no tweaks to the layout and Publisher default for the export (again PDF (for print)).

[Wosven]

Hi @JanFortune and @AdamCP

and welcome.

Did you test with the beta version? It's 1.10.5, so some bugs were corrected, and installing a Beta version won't mess your retail installations.

[AdamCP]

Hi @Wosven

Thanks for the idea. I've just downloaded the Beta and tried a couple of layouts. Sadly, same results. I even tried increasing the compression and reducing the document resolution to 72 dpi and the file sizes are still > 100MB.

[Wosven]

@AdamCP How many pages in your document and which preset when exporting?

Can you post a dummy file with Lorem Ipsum or similar? Your problem look strange.

Does a "saving as" of your files make them lighter and able to export smaller PDF?

[Old Bruce]

3 hours ago, JanFortune said:

I use Affinity to layout two types of books --  ...Every time I try to export a novel file from affinity to PDF it takes ages and comes out enormous -- latest is 174 MB -- unusable to send to the printers.

Do you have Save History With Document turned on? It is in the File Menu. File >  Save History With Document

[AdamCP]

@Old Bruce — No, Save History With Document is turned off.

 

[AdamCP]

@Wosven — Novels are between 170 and 400 pages (usually around 230). The sample uploaded is about average and results in a PDF of about 170 MB when exported using PDF (for print).

When sending to authors to proof, we usually export as PDF (for print) and don't change the defaults. This is the export setting we've been using this afternoon.

Just tried doing a Save As… on layout. The new file was 1 KB smaller than the original. The export of that copy (using PDF (for print)) was 174 MB, same as the other times I tried it. (The file that was sent to the printers for that book was roughly 1.5 MB.)

sample.afpub

[Old Bruce]

Arrgh... I should read before posting. the PDF is too large, not the publisher file.....

Sorry.

If this is text alone then I would suggest looking at the PDF and seeing if the text is text or if it is outlines. If you export as Curves then the size is massive. 170 instead of less than 2.

[Wosven]

I don't have any problem either, file is under 3Mo, less than a minute for export. I simply replace part of the font (this need adjustemznts, but it's for another thread), and replaced the logo.

@AdamCPDid you tried without logo?

sampleAdam3_CMYK.pdf

sampleAdam3_Grey.pdf

sampleAdam3_forPrint.pdf

[AdamCP]

@Old Bruce — just checked the PDF settings and it's exporting all fonts as fonts and not curves. As I said, we're just using the default settings for the exports.

Thanks for tryings @Wosven — currently, if I do the export on my old laptop, I get the same file sizes you found; if I do it on my iMac or Jan's MacBook, the same layout comes out at 174MB using the same default export settings. I've tried the same layout without the logo and got the same file size for the PDF — 174MB. It's as if the export function is applying the X-1a preset to everything.

[R C-R]

FWIW, when I open the sample.afpub file on my Mac, I get 3 missing font notifications & one for the missing linked resource (the "title page masthead.afdesign" file). If I ignore the preflight warning that generates & export as is to PDF using the (for print) defaults, the resulting file is only 1.2 MB.

As my sig shows, I am running Catalina so I do not have a clue why the export is so large for you two.

[Wosven]

1 hour ago, AdamCP said:

X-1a

There's no problem with X-1a, it's simply a setting that will rasterise only objects with transparency (opacity different than 100%), but it won't modify or rasterise text or any other object on the blank canvas.

My first export CMYK is done with such preset.

 

When I export a ±1050 pages"black" book from ID with such PDF/X-1a:2001 setting, the file is 12Mo. 20 Mo if I keep the 6 pages with illustrations.

If I import the IDML in APub, sadly, the text stop flowing after 150 pages, variables and footnotes are lost. Once exported with the images, it's a 22Mo PDF.

 

Perhaps Affinity need to check your file, since there's certainly a bug.

 

[Old Bruce]

8 hours ago, JanFortune said:

Every time I try to export a novel file from affinity to PDF it takes ages and comes out enormous -- latest is 174 MB

The only way I can get a PDF to take a long time to export and to be this large is to have the text exported as curves. Check the settings on the export Preset in the More section. It is possible to name a home grown preset Press Ready.

 

[Dan C]

Hi @JanFortune/ @AdamCP,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble!

I suspect this may be due to the font in use in the document, I can see these are named 'Adobe Jenson'.

Having checked on Adobe Fonts website these are now called 'Adobe Jenson Pro' and are provided in the OpenType format, unlike the original 'Adobe Jenson' fonts, which were a form of variable fonts (and unfortunately Affinity doesn't currently support variable fonts).

Can you please confirm for me, do you have the current 'Adobe Jenson Pro' fonts installed directly from Adobe Fonts, or is this the older/another variant of this font from a different source?

If the application is unable to embed the font when exporting to PDF, the text would be converted to curves to preserve visual appearance, hence the PDF file size you're seeing currently.

Many thanks in advance

[AdamCP]

Hi @Dan C

The Adobe Jenson is, indeed, an old face that we've been using for a couple of decades. I re-built the layouts using Adobe Garamond Pro and Adobe Caslon Pro (both faces purchased last year) and they all exported at less than 1 MB. I then bought new Adobe Pro versions of the Jenson faces we regularly use, redid the layout again using those and the export was, again, a MB or so. Still puzzled as to why this behaviour has been coming and going on different machines but changing to newer typefaces seems to doing the trick.

Many thanks — and to everyone who chipped in.

[lacerto]

3 hours ago, AdamCP said:

Still puzzled as to why this behaviour has been coming and going on different machines but changing to newer typefaces seems to doing the trick.

I suppose this is a Multiple Master (MM) Type 1 font, which I think is only supported on legacy systems (and on Windows used to work only with Adobe Type Manager). It is a bit different on mac but it seems that on Catalina and even on Sierra there is something that eventually breaks the support and causes apps to either rasterize the text using such fonts, or convert it to curves.

I picked the font (consisting of nine PFB files) from my old Adobe Font Folio 8 but not even FontLab 7 or FontLab Studio 5.6 could open these fonts for editing.

There is an anecdote on Wikipedia about Multiple Master version of Adobe Jenson:

Quote

Describing why the technology failed, a retrospective by Tamye Riggs, written for Adobe, noted: "Users were forced to generate instances for each variation of a font they wanted to try, resulting in a hard drive littered with font files bearing such arcane names as MinioMM_578 BD 465 CN 11 OP." Prominent Adobe font designer Carol Twombly cited the frustrations of the failed project as one of several reasons behind her decision to leave font design around 1999, and Adobe's Christopher Slye would later relate that he had been concerned that Adobe's principal type designer Robert Slimbach had damaged his health struggling to apply multiple master technology to Adobe Jenson in the late 1990s.