PDF Export - huge Files!

[thomaso]

I wonder, if APub does support jpg compression for 16 bit at all?  If not it might be useful to remove the JPG option for exports from 16 bit afpubs.
Or even to deactivate 16 bit as document color space? It might be less necessary in a layout publishing application than it could cause confusion – different to an image editor.
 

[MartinHH]

Hi Thomaso,

wow, that's a great solution! I didn't recognised that point. Thanks a lot for your big effort! I will start testing as soon as my new mac is up and running! 

Stay tuned, I will report the results here!

Thanks again, best regards

Cheers

Martin

[MartinHH]

Hi @thomaso, now I run another test with my original document.

8bit, 60% compression, PDF 1.4

Result: 2.33GB. That's a good way, but never the less far away from <=1GB.

HG

Martin

[MartinHH]

I think I've got it. And I think that the Affinity Guys did a good job!

Beta 206, 8 bit, PDF 1.7, 85% compression.

Output PDF Size: 618MB! Thanks a lot, Guys! Good Job!

Cheers

Martin

[thomaso]

1 minute ago, MartinHH said:

Beta 206, 8 bit, PDF 1.7, 85% compression. (...) Output PDF Size: 618MB!

Na endlich! Heureka!

Mich interessiert trotzdem noch 1 Sache, please:
Öffne APub v.192 !!, öffne das Test2.afpub (also das ich auch habe) , ändere den docfarbraum in 8 bit, und exportiere es mit diesen Einstellungen:
bicubic > 300 dpi  _  300 dpi  _  85%  _  PDF 1.7 _ document _ document
und schicke dann das PDF. Okay? Danke!

[MartinHH]

No problem, you've got mail!

Thanks again and have a nice weekend!

 

[MartinHH]

Good evening!

I have to put my enthusiasm from my last posting into some perspective. Today I did a few more test exports, which resulted in the following:

20 pages, pictures and text

1st document 16bit
export quality
100% - 330MB 
80% - 330MB
60% - 330MB
Why doesn't the output size change with decreasing quality?

2nd document 8bit
export quality
100% - 196MB

EDIT

85%  - 22MB - 

80% - 196MB
60% - 22MB
Ok, it is a bit strange that there is no difference between 100 and 80% in the output size. But at 60% it is a huge leap. And what about 85%?

I can't explain all this, but with 16bit documents there seems to be something wrong. Or did I miss something? Is there an explanation?

Thanks a lot!
 

Martin

[Steps]

This may help one to reduce PDF size:

I optimize the images I use as first step with JPEGMini before I drag them into my Publisher document.
After that I export my PDF without JPG compression allowed.

This gives me smaller files compared to allowing the PDF export to compress at a specific quality again.

I verified by extracting the images from the document and comparing it with the original file checksum that APub indeed does not change them.

I also use Publisher for my photobooks.

[MartinHH]

@Steps: Thanks, but the picture-size is not the main problem. I reduced the size drastically without a notable effect. My problem, or my question is about that unpredictable effect with the different compression rates. I have no explanation for that strange effect.

 

 

[Steps]

On 12/15/2018 at 10:49 PM, MartinHH said:

@Steps: Thanks, but the picture-size is not the main problem. I reduced the size drastically without a notable effect. My problem, or my question is about that unpredictable effect with the different compression rates. I have no explanation for that strange effect.

Yes, I got that there seems to be a bug with 16 bit. And Serif should fix it.

I just meant that your apub file does not need to be that big if you can compress the images beforehand.

I scale the RAW file in PhotoShop to the size I want to place it at 301 DPI and optimize the JPG once with JPEGMini.
This way my apub file does not grow larger than it needs to be and I don't have a second compression step.
As you know every JPEG compression kills a bit quality.

This was not meant as a solution for the bug but a general hint if you suffer right now from too big PDFs.

EDIT: Color space and ICC profile must match for this. Otherwise it gets converted to an TIF file which is much bigger.

Edited December 17, 2018 by Steps
Added an detail

[Dave Harris]

JPEG compression will only be used if it is needed, to avoid introducing compression artefacts unnecessarily. For example, if they are downsampled, clipped, or need to be rasterised because of some effect applied to them. If you want to reduce file size, I'd suggest downsampling the images. 300 dpi is fairly high.

[fde101]

300 dpi is basically the minimum for something that will be printed, particularly if there are photos involved.

 

EDIT: however, most printers can't handle 16-bit (or at least it makes no significant difference in the output) so 16-bit document or not, exporting to 8-bit is probably more sensible if printing.

[thomaso]

On 1/30/2019 at 5:31 PM, fde101 said:

so 16-bit document or not, exporting to 8-bit is probably more sensible if printing

The problem/bug in Martins case was that APub does not export 8 bit from a 16 bit document. One needs to set the document to 8 bit to achieve an failureless 8 bit export. 

[thomaso]

On 1/30/2019 at 1:18 PM, Dave Harris said:

JPEG compression will only be used if it is needed,

@Dave Harris , in an 16 bit .afpub there is no compression working even when downsampling is necessary and is set in export and in more options. So there is a bug either in GUI or in export code.

[reddot]

Hello - I'm a graphic designer with over 30 years experience using Adobe and Quark tools creating documents for print or large-format production. Like everyone else I'm looking to migrate to Affinity products.

Yesterday I went through about 30 variants of print settings in Affinity Pub trying to get usable output at reasonable size for a 2-sided business card project that included 10 linked photos. Affinity output varied from 400k up to 27 mg depending. Embedding photos made no difference. In my tests using jpg compression actually increased file size compared to using no compression, and of course degraded quality. Counter-intutitive I know.

Don't believe they've got that jpg compression quite sorted out, but here are my settings that provided good results and acceptable files size compared to INDD. (see attached)

Final Affinity pdf size was 1.7mg compared to 486k INDD output of the same content.

YMMV

[000]

Not sure if this is related, but in my case (see link below) Affinity Publisher converts all text to curves, which unfortunately makes the software unusable for me (for both print and web use). The PDF export really needs some fixing ...

 

[Richard786]

I too have problems with large PDF files from Pub which I then need to optimise in Acrobat.

The same type of files, usining the same type of imges gave much smaller PDF sizes in InDesign.

It seems odd that a straightforward preset to optimise the files for printing can't be added to the Export menu. Surely all Affinity need to do is look at what is happening on the Abobe presets and then add them to their own software?

[Joachim_L]

14 minutes ago, Richard786 said:

Surely all Affinity need to do is look at what is happening on the Abobe presets and then add them to their own software?

It is not only presets. Affinity applications are using PDFLib, I doubt Adobe is using this library. So there will be always a (small) lead for Adobe on this field I assume.