Editing Supplied PDF Files Without drastically increasing the file size.

If you are an independent graphic designer, you may find yourself having to edit supplied pdfs on a regular basis. You probably already have learned that trying to make permanent changes in Adobe Acrobat is okay for something extremely simple, but the only way to have the full flexibility you usually need is by editing your PDF in Adobe Illustrator. But even if you flatten your layers in Illustrator, the size of the PFDF is often huge, and when you have multiple pages (especially with lots of images) when you regroup all of you pages back together, what started off as something around 1 or 2 megabytes can suddenly become 20 megabytes.

 

The Tip

A good way to solve this problem without destroying the resolution of your images is to create an Indesign file and place each page of your corrected pdf in that document. Then export the Indesign document to a pdf using your standard optimized 300 dpi compression settings and more times than not, your final corrected PDF is back to the size that it should be and you can now email the final correct PDF back to your customer without having to irritate your customer by having to use Hightail, Dropbox or any other FTP type of service.