Help!! Reduce file size to 2mb??

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    • #87706

      Hi all,

      I have a 45 page brochure that needs to be reduced to a 2mb pdf to upload to our website, but I cant get any smaller than 8.4mb.

      I have done the following:

      • reduced all photography to minimum size and resolution
      • made sure there are no embedded images
      • got rid of almost all tranparency
      • set as rgb
      • exported an smallest file size
      • file save as new

      Does anyone have any other ideas about how to reduce the file size? I have a similar file that is the same apart from some photos that are linked in, and this is only 1mb as high quality.

      Any help or suggestions would be higely appreciated!!

      thank you

    • #87707
      David Blatner
      Keymaster
    • #87739

      Some ideas:

      • Do you have any repeating artwork that could be in a Master Page?
      • Print->Printer->PDF/Save to Postscript, Drag into Distiller with same settings

      Besides these and David’s suggestions, you could export ~6 pages separately to troubleshoot where the culprit is.

      Good Luck!

    • #87743
      Ari Singer
      Member

      In my experience I found that very complex vector artwork can bloat a PDF and can’t get compressed to make it a smaller size. Check your file if you have that, and if you do try converting it to raster.

    • #87794

      Thanks everyone for the advice, it was the vectors in my file! I had some logos that were placed as vectors in the brochure, they only appeared 3 times but took up loads of space. I have gone through the whole file and replaced all vector graphics with pngs and it worked!

      A really helpful tip I found was in adobe acrobat to view what was taking up space in the pdf – file > save as> optimised pdf > in the pdf optimizer window > audit space usuage (top right button) > this gives you a break down of all the elements in the files and how much space they take up.

      Most of my space was in ‘content streams’ which is either text or graphics. Seeing as an identical text only file was tiny in comparrision, I assumed it was the vector/graphics. changing this to linked pngs reduced the file from 7.6mb to 2mb.

      Phew! thanks everyone for the help

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