: Adobe PDF file too big to upload. What are my options? I have 4 Illustrator (Adobe pdf) files I need to upload to a freelance website for a job I did. I saved each one as a PDF file but

@Rivera951

I recently learned an excellent method to make reduced size .pdfs from large illustrator files:

In illustrator choose "print to Adobe .pdf". That's it. My 126 Meg file became 700k and retained all crisp transparencies and rasters.

No more bothering with elaborate image compression work and I don't have to go easy on transparencies and gradients.

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@Debbie163

You should use Acrobat Pro to "clean up" your PDF.

Open your PDF in Acrobat Pro and then select "save as other" and "optimized PDF" the the menu "file".

In the sections "discard objects", "discard usr data" and "clean up", check all the boxes if you don't need to keep hyperlinks or layers. This will also remove all the unwanted data that add to the weight of your file and flatten everything. If I'm not wrong, you can still keep your PDF editable in Illustrator.

You can also adjust the resolution of the images in the "images" section, and compress them in "zip". If it's still too heavy, you can use "JPG maximum".

It's also worth downsampling to 300dpi for color images, 600dpi for grayscale and 1240 dpi for monochrome/bitmap; Acrobat Pro will compress all your images to the same resolution.

I'm quite sure by using Acrobat Pro, your 100mb file will drop down to something between 5-15mb!

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@Eichhorn212

You could also use smallpdf.com/compress-pdf to decrease the size of each of your pdfs. I use it often. It's super quick and easy (and free!)

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@Rivera951

Have you tried zipping each of them? Would that get the files under the size max?

Alternately, you could make low-res PDF "Proofs" for your client, upload those to the freelance website and deliver the large files via yousendit.com or other huge file sending website.

I've used yousendit to deliver high-res video to clients in the past. I think you can send 20Gb files or something through services like that.

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@Miguel516

If it were my project, I would probably lay out the posters in InDesign, placing the Illustrator and Photoshop objects. When exporting as a PDF, I would downsample the resolution of all objects to around 200 ppi. The reason is explained in Rafael's post, but to summarize: a poster of this size is unlikely to benefit from that bump in resolution given the typical viewing distance (this is untrue in special applications, however, so use your judgment).

As for sending the file, if the above doesn't help you get a more reasonable file size, I've shared files using Dropbox or Google Drive with no issues, and on one occasion, a client used WeTransfer to send large image files to me.

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@Si6392903

It would be better in Ilustrator but if they are designed in Ilustrator. Now that you designed it in photoshop it is not important, you only have a photoshop image inside a ilustrator file converted to pdf...

Your original file is exactly the same file. Your 600dpi image at 18x12 is exactly the same as a 36x24 300dpi.

It is recomended in your case to use ilustrator to make the "thinking buble" and texts in vectors, so you can export the photos in lower resolution and the text still will look sharp regardless the final size.

You can try some things, export in a little lower resolution, for example 200 dpi or use some jpg compression which is a lossy compresion, but use realy high quality settings.

I explainded a bit why you can use lower dpi settings here How to create a very big photo (like for a billboard) In that link it is another to a hot topic question too, with more explanations.

You also can try a diferent share-files service. I have seeing some that accept files up to 300Mb, but I have not use them, so I cant recomend a specific one.

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