Comments on: Why Is My File Size So Huge?

By: Jongware

Jongware — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 20:04:00 +0000

@Jeff: the “Save As” trick should not be done with your images (and other placed file) but with your InDesign file instead.

In your case, ‘replacing’ the gradient with a smaller file only made your InDesign file slightly larger: it still contains the original large image, annotated “Do Not Use”, and the new image right after that.

You can use “Save As” as much as you want. (Play it safe: never overwrite your original document with Save As. (Even tho ‘I do that all the time, I’m always thinking “What if it goes wrong this time?”))

By: Jeff W.

Jeff W. — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 19:39:16 +0000

I was creating our 6-page company newsletter yesterday. Pages 1-2, 5-6 (11×17) were saving at about 5 MB. Perfect. I was also working on pages 3-4 (8.5 x 11) and it was saving at about 4 MB…but after multiple “saves”, the file size ballooned to 1.57 GB!!!

I have several images (one of which is a large gradient mask created in PhotoShop CS 5.5) but they were all “placed” – not pasted. I went back and saved the gradient as a jpeg, thinking that may lower the file size, but it did nothing. The other images are thumbnail size. I have learned thru this forum to save using “save as” in the future, but for now, how can I get my 8.5 x 11 file back to a reasonable file size?

Thanks is advance.

By: Rodolfo

Rodolfo — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:13:24 +0000

When handling images in InDesign on a document, do you must use low res images and once you are ready for printing replace them with high res? or does InDesign has the ability to use high res while you are working on the document, since images are linked and what you see on the screen is a proxy?

It seems that in QuarkXpress, you had to use low res and then replace them. At least this was true a few years ago.

Please help…

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 22:49:18 +0000

@Bill: Interesting. There are a number of reasons a PDF could be bigger than the sum of the assets, though it's rare. But the main issue is your Compression settings for images. For example, Zip compression is lossless (no degradation) but the file sizes are often larger than JPEG. Are you placing the images as grayscale TIFFs? This might be better handled over at the forums.

By: BIll Cunningham

BIll Cunningham — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:49:43 +0000

@ David – the printer is Createspace and won’t accept anything over 400MB to be uploaded.

I was always under the impression the PDF would actually be smaller than the ID file and the linked images. The images aren’t loaded “into” the file so why would the PDF be so massive? Isn’t it all “distilled” into the PDF?

(Again, I’m a novice here so forgive my ignorance)

Each B&W comic page is an image at 300 dpi and averages around 2mb each. 120+ pages plus some text and bonus material = 197 pages total.

Hope that helps clarify matters for you so you can clarify them for me…

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:23:29 +0000

@Bill: In Finder or Windows Explorer, select the InDesign file and all the linked images and see how large they are. Having a 450 MB PDF for a graphic novel doesn’t surprise me at all, as you must have a boat load of linked images.

A more important question is why do you want to make the PDF smaller? If it’s just going to the printer, they’re probably used to PDFs that large.

By: BIll Cunningham

BIll Cunningham — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:10:06 +0000

Guys –

I’m trying to handle something that’s urgent and has been giving me fits:

I have a 65MB ID file in CS3 (a graphic novel which is very image heavy) that I am readying to go to the printer. When I export the file to PDF the whole pdf document swells to over 450MB.

All the images are linked properly. I can’t see how the file size of the PDF would swell like this. Is there a quick-fix for this that maintains the high print quality I need to send to my printer? If I can at least get this file down to 350 MB I would be happy.

What the heck am i doing wrong and how do I fix it ? As you can no doubt tell, I am a complete novice at this. I need a link to a step-by-step process so I can handle this.

By: Shangara Singh

Shangara Singh — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 17:43:05 +0000

Just found this topic after noticing a 6-page ID file had grown to 1.62GB.

It contains just two small JPEGs (linked) of 110KB each, text and a vector object.

ITE, copy-pasted all content to a new document and now the size is a healthy 2MB.

Using Mac OS and InDesign CS5.

By: C

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 16:17:21 +0000

I just tried this and my filesize is still huge at 248MB and none of the images are embeded. It is only 8 pages long but does have a lot of shapes. I’m using CS5.

By: AnnaP

AnnaP — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:18:24 +0000

This is a good tip, thanks! My file is now less than half the size and is quicker to navigate!