I have received a few PDF files from a particular client that were around 5-8 GB in size. I will open them in Illustrator, in order to make a pretty minor change, color of object, or type, and when I save them I end up with a 50 GB file. Any thoughts on what might be doing this?
On behalf of Adobe Systems Incorporated …
What you are doing wrong is opening a PDF file in Adobe Illustrator to make “a pretty minor change!”
Adobe Illustrator is
not, repeat
not, repeat yet again
not a general PDF file editor. Contrary to long-held public misconceptions, PDF is
not the native file format of Adobe Illustrator. (Illustrator document objects and attributes are stored in private data areas not processed by Acrobat but inside a PDF wrapper!) The only PDF files that Adobe Illustrator can safely edit are PDF files saved from Illustrator for which the
Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities option was selected (an option which is absolutely
not available when saving as any PDF/X version)
and (1) hasn't been edited in any way in Acrobat (or which any Acrobat plug-ins)
and (2) for which all fonts used in the original Illustrator document are installed on the system running Illustrator. Anything else is a potentially lossy operation likely to cause corruption and/or loss of data and/or quality in the PDF file.
Quite frankly, other than font and color issues in general, the opening and subsequent saving of PDF files in Adobe Illustrator is probably the top cause of problems in PDF print publishing workflows that we encounter on both Adobe customer forums and other professional printing forums.
There are some simple safe edits that can be performed in Acrobat Pro itself. Other more complex edits require third party plug-ins such as PitStop Pro. And in many cases, you are better off to go to the original source documents, make the fix, and regenerate the PDF file.
- Dov
