: Why is my PDF so huge? This site seemed like the best match for my question. So I'm about to graduate college, and I made a nice resume in Word. I used a kind of fancy tabling system that

@BetL875

Unchecking "Preserve Photoshop Editing Capabilities" is absolutely the solution here. Took my PDF from 23mb to 870kb!

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@Carla748

What Scott said is true, except that Photoshop can save live text in PDF format. In fact, I was facing the large file size issue while trying to retain the live text when I came across this question. It's a bit dated, but for others also googling this problem I figured I'd contribute anyway.

If you're just looking for a small PDF that doesn't need selectable text fields, I have an easy solution that offers decent quality at a small size, (100-1,000 kb.) First, go to File > Save for web and devices... or press ctrl (command on mac) + alt + shift + S. From there, you can save a gif in 256 colors or less, which compresses a TON, but it looks a lot nicer than those ugly JPG artifacts, which end up at a bigger file size most of the time. Then open the gif in photoshop and save as a PDF as usual, no extra compression necessary. Your PDF should be dramatically smaller now.

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@Tiffany317

I removed a large white background layer, and opened PSD file in illustrator. Then saved as PDF from illustrator. ~40MB pdf file became 98.3KB . The file was full of shapes and texts.

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@XinRu324

I'm probably way late to this, but it's always an easy way out to use the AdobePDF printer, and simply export out a dumb (yet tiny file size) PDF. Last resort, and hang on to the original, but it'll work in a pinch.

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@Sue6373160

I don't know if you tried this yet but if you uncheck the "PERSERVE PHOTOSHOP EDITING CAPABILITES" and the "OPTIMIZE FOR FAST WEB PREVIEW" options on the 'General' window of the save box it reduces a file from 25mb to about 10mb. If you go into the 'Compression' window of the same save box and choose a Medium jpeg compression it will bring it down to about 3.5mb.
I save my files for print this way and unflattened with a 5mm bleed and the layer is locked.
Hope this helps

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@Nimeshi706

I've also found that flattening the image and then converting it to a smart object helps a lot. I use "smallest file size" setting, with "editable layers" unchecked, and compression at high or max keeps the quality pretty decent at 300kb file sizes. That being said, a program like Pages creates beautiful PDFs at even smaller sizes, so it's clear that Photoshop is not the right tool for this job, I just use it to slap my signature on some things.

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@Nickens508

The more the image DPI, the larger will its size be. If you plan to print that pdf then its advisable to retain it, else if you have designed for web purposes only, I would suggest you to compress your pdf using this excellent online service: smallpdf.com

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@Yeniel278

The primary reason for this is that when you save a Photoshop Document as PDF, it saves all the features contained in the photoshop document (e.g. layers, color profiles etc.) including the ones that would aid it to be later edited in photoshop if need be.
Something I would suggest as a solution to your problem (that I use the most frequently for PDF optimization) is using Nitro PDF. Simply open your PDF in Nitro PDF editor and select Prepare>Optimize Document from the file menu. Now customize your document according to your needs of size and quality and save it.
It has always provided me with good results. Hoping the same for you. Cheers.

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@LarsenBagley460

Try knocking out the background so the white-space is transparent. You're basically asking Photoshop to export a huge image to PDF, so less bitmapped image data and more alpha transparency should decease the file size.

Also, as other have probably mentioned:

• Image -> Mode -> Greyscale

• Uncheck the Layers box in your Save As dialogue.

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@Jennifer810

In your situation, I would download and install the MS Office 2013 public preview and open the PDF in Word 2013, which in my tests does a fine job of converting a PDF into an editable Word doc -- particularly one that was created from Word in the first place. Word 2010 may be able to do the same, but I've not tested that.

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@Nimeshi706

I second Scott's advice. Your PDF save settings will affect your output file. When saving from Photoshop, select Smallest File Size from your Adobe PDF Presets menu (in the Save As Photoshop PDF dialog). You may also want to check Optimize for Fast Web View. Check your compression settings as well. You can compress the image to a lower resolution. Lower resolution will affect your output file size.

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@Murray976

By saving it from Photoshop you've saved an image file rather than merely text and shapes.

So, your PDF is now just one big image. Photoshop may not have been the best tool to edit the PDF with.

You can try flattening the Photoshop file before resaving it. That may reduce the file size.

Optimally you'd want to save a PDF from an application which contains live text.

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