Tony Cotterill Posted September 27, 2019 Share Posted September 27, 2019 Here's a curious one. It's not a game breaker by any means, but it would be nice if somebody knew why the following happened... I have a new document and since the shape of the printed area is not rectangular I have made a bespoke shape picture box and created lines, using the pan tool, around it for a 3mm bleed. Then I made a mask and masked out the bleed area so that I can toggle it on and off for viewing ease. All tickety-boo so far. I do my designing - only two pages - and output it as a PDF. Now, when I have the mask ON, to hide the 3mm bleed the file exports nice and quickly and is around 1.2mB for a 300dpi document. When I turn the mask OFF so show the bleed the file takes an age and is around 15.5mB for the same 300dpi resolution. What I'm wondering is... HUH? Why? What on earth is taking up the other 14mB. Is this a feature/bug, or am I doing something weird? Cheers, Tony Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BofG Posted September 27, 2019 Share Posted September 27, 2019 Hi Tony, can you share the files in question? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Cotterill Posted September 27, 2019 Author Share Posted September 27, 2019 Sure. Here you go. I also forgot to mention that the is Publisher, in case that's important, and I'm using Windows 10. Half-hexes with bleed.pdf Half-hexes without bleed.pdf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BofG Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 Hi @Tony Cotterill, your "without bleed" file has been fully rasterised on output - the pdf contains just two flat images. The "with bleed" file contains all the parts as separate image objects. That is partly where the size difference is coming from... however, the images are massive, for example the green logo on page 1 is showing as being @ 22,457dpi. It's in there scaled to less than 1% of original size. All the other parts (ship, planet etc.) are the same. Are these vectors in the original design file or have you placed them as images? Also, do you need them to be separate objects in the pdf? Choosing the 'flatten' pdf preset will give you the same output as the "without bleed" file. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Cotterill Posted September 30, 2019 Author Share Posted September 30, 2019 Thanks very much for the analysis, BofG. It explains much. I'll cut down the images sizes that the artist sent. It only really leaves me with two questions.... 1. Why does adding or subtracting the mask make a difference to how it is saved. Perhaps the mask causes it to automatically be flattened? 2. How did you do your analysyis? It would be useful for future such occurances. Cheers, Tony Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BofG Posted September 30, 2019 Share Posted September 30, 2019 If you exported both files with the same pdf settings then it stands to reason that the mask causes the flattening. It does make sense in a way - to apply the mask the program has to process the whole stack of images within it. Part of that process must combine them into one image. Without the mask, that process isn't carried out, so they are just output as the individual images. To see what was happening with the files I just opened them in Designer, the layers panel showed me about how many images there are. Selecting an image shows the details in the context menu (top left of the window). That gives the scaled size (1% in this case) and the "effective dpi" (~30,000 dpi). I don't have Publisher, but I imagine that info must be shown in there too. Hope that helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Cotterill Posted September 30, 2019 Author Share Posted September 30, 2019 Very much so. Yes. Thanks again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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