Different sized PDFs

[Tony Cotterill]

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

[Tony Cotterill]

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

[Tony Cotterill]

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

[Tony Cotterill]

Very much so. Yes. Thanks again.