Smaller PDF Files, please!

[gafvert]

Hello, just to add to this discussion I've encountered another related oddity with pdf export file sizes:

I noticed that simple pdf documents with just text and no images were consistently 400k+ while I'd expect them to be <32k. So I made a simple test starting with a blank new document and adding a single text box with a short text in in the middle and exported this with the "print" pdf preset. From Indesign this file ended up 9k and from Affinity Publisher (1.7.3) it's 424k as you can see. Trying the "web" pdf preset in Affinity Publisher gives me a 40k file. No images, and in both cases embedded subsets of fonts.

Once thing I notices was that if I unchecked embed color profile in the export settings the file size goes down dramatically, down to more or less 12k. Is it reasonable to expect 400k+ color profile data in a pdf like this? And if that's ever useful it doesn't feel like this should be the default settings for exporting for print in a simple document like this.

 

[MikeW]

pdf profiles can be larger than 400k. By default, ID doesn't embed the profile, it, like Affinity applications can as you have seen, only reference it as a document-level intent.

[Michæl Atchison]

I think I'm experiencing the same infuriating issue (bug?) with my document having insanely high file sizes when exported. I'm using the latest version from the Mac App Store. I think it's a font problem, but I think it's one that Affinity can fix on their end.

As a clean test, I created a brand new letter-sized document consisting of just a single large text frame filled with 8-pt type. The font for my project is EB Garamond Bold (a nice free and open font).

• When I export to PDF using the native macOS print dialog, the output file looks perfect. All text is fully selectable in Preview.app and perfectly sharp even at maximum zoom. The file size is 37 KB.
• When I use the built-in Affinity export dialog, the output file ALSO looks perfect. However, the text is NOT selectable in Preview.app anymore. It's all artwork now. The file size is a whopping 8 MB !! This leads me to believe that all the text has been converted to curves (though I don't have an easy way to test that).

I tried it with a bunch of other fonts—system fonts, commercial fonts, free fonts, and the problem does NOT occur on any of them. This explains why this "bug" isn't very widespread. In fact, I even tried with with EB Garamond REGULAR and the problem does NOT occur. That's why I'm hesitant to even call it a bug on Affinity's part. Maybe it's a bug in the font file. Unfortunately, this is the font that I'm stuck using for this particular project. And I don't think the bug is insurmountable, since we don't see the problem occur on the native macOS PDF exporter, and we don't see it in other software.

Hopefully this is something that can be fixed in a future update. But honestly, once I'm done with this project, I'll probably never notice either way. Just wanted to do my part to contribute to the thread.

EDIT: I fixed the problem by deleting the font from my system and downloading a new, slightly different version. I had to go through my document and tweak a couple things because the spacing had been changed ever so slightly, but all is good now. In the future, I'll know to test my fonts to make sure they embed correctly before using them in a project.

 

Edited December 20, 2019 by Michæl Atchison
Workaround

[Old Bruce]

There are two ways a font can be converted to curves. The first is to have a text frame selected by the Move Tool (the arrow shaped one) and then you hit the convert to curves button by mistake. The second is on export you have to have this selected.

[000]

Michael, make aure that you are not using a font manager, but install the fonts using the OS -- that's what fixed the problem for me (see my post above). It's a strange one, hope this gets fixed at some point (by either Serif or the font manager people).

[X33134]

On 7/8/2019 at 2:25 PM, thomaso said:

Jens, I noticed occasionally  3 unexpected reasons for enormous PDF file size:

1. Document color set to 16 bit –> resulted in uncompressed images

This reduced my file size from 100 - 220 MB to 10 - 30 MB in my case. Granted it was the first project I've ever done in Publisher but it's a great tip for anyone with humongous PDF file size.

Thank you thomaso.

[fde101]

23 hours ago, X33134 said:

Document color set to 16 bit –> resulted in uncompressed images

The checkbox for compression in the export window specifies that it is JPEG compression.

JPEG does not support 16-bit-per-component color.

I think it would be helpful to have an option added to convert the images to 8-bit-per-component-color upon PDF export, which would also allow the JPEG compression to work.  For many use cases there would be little value in having 16-bit color components in the exported PDF.

[Bolashak idol]

On 7/6/2019 at 1:19 AM, Jens Krebs said:

I really like the PDF export and am fine with the speed and everything, but the file sizes are SO MUCH BIGGER than from the competition, that it starts hindering my workflow.

I don't mind the size of a high-res print file, but there should definitely be a setting equal to other applications "smallest file size" -- many of my customers want to have their publications online for download on their website and large files are just really inconvenient. I have tried setting the image resolution and JPG quality down, subsetted fonts and restricted the Acrobat version to 8 (my normal tricks to save a couple bytes), but the files are still monstrous compared to ,other software'.

What exactly is blowing up the file size? Maybe I'm just missing a setting?

Hi Jens, it's been two years since you discussed this decision. Have you solved this problem with the large pdf format? Please share the information.

[000]

@Bolashak idol Yes, the issue was evwntually solved -- there have been many updates to Publisher and Designer as well to my font manager. Basically most problems disappeared over time because bugs were fixed on all ends.

If your PDFs are still to big, PDF files you have placed in Publisher (with the new pass-through feature) might be the issue -- as far as I am aware this is the only size related issue that cannot be solved by different PDF export settings at the moment.

[Nightjar]

I still find Publisher PDFs quite huge. Is there a tutorial out there for great compression? To use other PDF size reducers is cumbersome.

[frindley]

One possible solution or factor to consider [and which I now see that Jens has mentioned above]… 

At the moment I'm designing a series of books that typically include 2 to 3 full-page ads supplied as PDFs exported from InDesign. These ads are relatively complex and large in their own right (10–20MB). I found that changing the setting for these placed PDFs from "pass-through" to "interpret" reduced my "small" PDFs from 36MB to a much more acceptable 3MB with no loss of quality.   

Edited May 15, 2022 by frindley
Acknowledging previous post with similar observation.

[GryphonArt]

How did you change the setting for these placed PDFs from "pass-through" to "interpret" Please?

I have also had these huge PDF file issues for a club Newsletter that also goes on the web after printing. I just found that if I opened the Publisher v2 file in Photo v2 it saves at a much better size.

 

[PaulEC]

In the Context toolbar, (just above the document window) where it says "PDF Passthrough" there is a drop-down, change it to "Interpret".

[GryphonArt]

Thanks - so each PDF image has to be changed to this ...URG:-(

[frindley]

34 minutes ago, GryphonArt said:

Thanks - so each PDF image has to be changed to this ...URG:-(

Not necessarily. In my case, I’ve found that changing just the very largest (in MBs) of my placed PDFs will make the most significant difference to the exported file size. Smaller PDFs can probably be left as is. 

[PaulEC]

Do be aware that changing this setting from Passthrough to Interpret may affect the way the PDF is displayed (eg, the fonts may no longer display correctly). It depends on the PDF.