AP Beta: Linked images seem not to reduce file size

[Ursonroute66]

I am working on a larger document with many images. A change of the image resource from "embedded" to "linked" does not change the file size of the Publisher document. Shouldn't it get smaller?

[Old Bruce]

Yes i would hope that the file would get smaller. I started with a blank A4 size document saved size was 8,164 bytes (8 KB on disk). I then placed a photo which was 3.6 MB in size, this was a multiple layered colour photo and the Publisher file then increased in size to 3,655,963 bytes (3.7 MB on disk). After changing the status of the photo from embedded to linked the file size of the Publisher file was 3,662,377 bytes (3.7 MB on disk) That is an increase of 6414 bytes.
I checked again after closing and opening the publisher document and then quitting the application and re-opening the publisher document but the Linked file version remained larger in size than the embedded version.
Then I opened Photo and used that to flatten and save the linked photo and in Publisher I had a notice that there was a change made. So that works as expected. I think what is happening is the placed image remained and some of the information about the link was added, in other words the embedded photo wasn't properly purged or replaced.
Size with flattened and updated linked photo was 192,848 bytes (197 KB on disk) so the information did go away when replacing the old photo with the new one. 

[Ursonroute66]

In the Resource Manager the "Make Linked..." button indicates that there will pop-up a window in later versions, were hopefully the preview of linked images can be customized in size and/or resolution. At the moment it seems that the full image can be linked to its source but is still embedded as a preview.