And thoose images can be a verey compressed jpg photos for example. Indesign file size does not take into acount the external images.

This actualy can reduce a little the output file.ģ) Compression. If the images used are bigger than ppi you need. This files are bigger.Ģ) Resampling of the images. If you used RGB files and you need a press ready file will be converted to CMYK.

And there is not one 'flavor' of pdf but can be customized according to your target needs.Īmong the things you can configure your file that affects the file size are:ġ) Color mode for images. PDF is not a 'working' file, it is an output file. I don't think 'convert' is a proper word for generating a pdf. There is no way to gess here what is that you have and what is the configuration or usage you need. For more information on the risks of refrying you can consult this article here: saving to postscript from adobe acrobat, also known as, refrying can have unintended consequences and it is important to closely inspect your files after refrying to make sure that nothing has gone wrong in the process. I guess this doesn't get to the brass tacks of the 'why' but assuming you need a smaller PDF that is still ready to send to the presses I hope this helps. This PDF might be smaller in size as it gets the PDF to bare bones and erases a lot of the information that InDesign adds into the file depending on the settings chosen upon exporting.

X-1a 2001 is a pretty safe standard which most digital printers accept. You can still select the settings for whichever standard you need the PDF to be generated at. File -> Save As -> More Options Post-scriptģ.) Run this post-script file through Acrobat Distiller which will regenerate a fresh PDF. Bleedbox is simply trimbox + the allowed bleed which will be specified by the printer you are choosing for this booklet.Ģ.) Save the PDF as a post-script file. Try the following to reduce size assuming you have acrobat and acrobat distiller.ġ.) Crop the size of your booklet to the bleedbox.

How to get pdf file to print larger