Large PDF file size

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droberts
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Apr 28, 2015 1:56 pm

Large PDF file size

Unread post by droberts »

I'm having trouble with a specific H&M project creating an unusually large PDF file, upwards of 9.5 megs. Typically, the projects I do are converted into PDF and HTML format. The HTML folder where that format is created shows a size of only 1.89 MB. The "images" folder for all the images related to the project (some of which are not in the project itself) totals 4.0 mb.

I calculated the size for each image that's included in the project and came to a total of 2.7 mb. I've looked at each individual image included in the project and no image goes beyond 200 kilobytes, with most images being less than 100 kb.

I'm not sure where the extra megs are coming from. This is not a particularly large document. Any ideas?

Edit: I wasn't able to upload the PDF file (too big?). If there's anything else you might need me to upload to help solve the issue, let me know.
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Tim Green
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Re: Large PDF file size

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi "d",

There are basically two factors that cause PDF files to get larger: the embedded image files and the embedded fonts.

Optimizing embedded images:

Images are the most important factor in help file size, text takes up almost no space compared to images. Two things make image files larger: "Fuzzy" images and the number of colors the image contains. Resizing an image often makes it "fuzzy" and a resized image is often larger than the original image because of this, even if its dimensions are smaller, because it does not compress as well.

Although this may seem counter-intuitive, using BMP images or images in Help & Manual's Impict graphic editor .IPP format as your source will generally give you the best image quality and the most compact files. That is because these files are uncompressed and can be converted to the various image formats needed by each output format most efficiently with the best compression. Also, the PDF format can only use BMP images natively without compression (they are compressed internally) and so no conversion is needed when you use this format for PDF. For other formats, BMP provides optimal conversion that lossy formats like JPG do not provide. (Since HM7 you can also use PNG and SVG images natively in PDF, but not in HM6.)

Don't forget that your PDF template may also contain images and they will also contribute to the file size -- particularly if you have inserted large images and scaled them down in the template. This will give you better quality for printing and zooming but the full original image file is included and that adds bulk, of course. The same applies to images in your project: Large images inserted in the HM editor and scaled there give you better printing and zooming quality but also larger PDF files.

Scaled images in your project:

Note that when you export to PDF, images scaled in Help & Manual still export the *full* original image file, just with a scaling command. This provides better zooming and printing quality, but also larger file sizes, of course. If you want to reduce your file size, scale the image in a graphics program *before* inserting it in your project. This ALSO applies to images in your .mnl PDF templates!!

Embedded fonts:

Check your font embedding settings in Project Explorer > Publishing Options > Adobe PDF > Font Embedding. Note that fonts on 64-bit Windows are much larger than they used to be and embedding them adds considerably to your PDF file size. You can avoid the need to embed fonts by using standard fonts that will be available on all user's computers. When you do embed fonts you can use the embedding settings to only embed those subsets of the font that you really need. Experiment with the GID Font Mode setting to get the best results you can.

Important: Only activate the "text as glyphs" option as a last resort in exceptional cases. This embeds all text as graphics glyphs, which will make your PDF files very large and disable the search capability (you can only search for text, not graphics).
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
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