Exported PDF file size

[AlanH]

Could someone enlighten me about the size of PDF files produced by AD, please?

I have created a simple A3 family tree using only text (Arial), vector lines and vector boxes. For some reason the AD project file is 2,412kB, and although I don't understand that, I'm not particularly bothered about it.

However, when I export a PDF (rasterizing nothing) in any format except 'For Web', the PDF is around 2,343kB. But if I export for web, it is a tiny 7kB! Both file sizes look identical when viewed.

I know storage space is cheap, but nonetheless this is a massive difference, and seemingly unnecessary. When I look at the bigger PDFs in Notepad, there's a massive amount of unreadable gobbledeygook there.

Any idea what's going on?

Alan

[Alfred]

That does sound very odd, Alan, but I can't even begin to guess at an explanation without something to look at. Are you able to share the file, or a redacted version of it?

 

[AlanH]

Hi Alfred - sorry, I should have given an example.

Looking again at the project document settings, it was originally set to CMYK/8 colour space, and the export for Print was huge, Web was small.

Changing the project to RGB/8 colour space exported small PDF files for Print and Web, but the source project file has stayed big.

I have purged some of the text, which has not affected file sizes, and attach examples of the two colour-space project files and the four PDF exports.

Is AD incorporating some form of preview bitmap into the CMYK Print version of the PDF - which is big due to the A3 paper size - and not in the web version?

Any ideas would help. In the meantime, I'll do my designs in RGB/8, overriding to CMYK/8 only for print-specific jobs.

Alan

PDF-Size-Test_CMYK.afdesign

PDF-Size-Test_RGB.afdesign

PDF-Size-Test_PRINT_CMYK.pdf

PDF-Size-Test_PRINT_RGB.pdf

PDF-Size-Test_WEB_CMYK.pdf

PDF-Size-Test_WEB_RGB.pdf

[lepr]

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[MikeW]

There are a couple reasons the CMYK version PDF will be so large. One is embedding the profile. The Blurb profile is large. Second would be by default the Allow advanced features in the More section of the PDF export dialog is checked. Not embedding the profile and unchecking that checkbox should yield a very small PDF even using CMYK.

[AlanH]

Thanks, Owen & Mike - I think I understand it now!

The key to it all was my having selected Blurb CMYK profile in the Preferences at some time in the past. As Mike points out, that adds about 2.3MB of code to the project file and, by default, embeds the same amount of code in the PDF output, hence the large file sizes. Selecting 'no embedding of profile' on export restores the small PDF size regardless of the project default.

This explains why, when I tried Owen's copy and 'new from clipboard' trick, my project file size stayed big - until I changed my Blurb default profile to something else.

I did try Allow advanced features on and off, but didn't see much difference in PDF output filesize.

So, problem solved - thanks once again, chaps!

Alan

[lepr]

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