"Why are PDFs sometimes much larger than they need to be?" you will find some tips on how to create size-efficient documents that look great without being excessively large. These strategies can be applied to any desktop publishing software of your choice. However, for the purpose of this article, we will use Swift Publisher for Mac, an easy-to-use page layout application.
*Design Wisely
The main contributor to the size of a PDF is raster images. They are made of pixels, which can be seen if you zoom in to an image (e.g. digital photos, screenshots, etc). How far you have to zoom in before you can see individual pixels is determined by the resolution, and higher resolution means larger file size. With the help of certain measures, you can considerably reduce a PDF size without compromising its quality.
Here are some rules to follow at the design stage:
Avoid Excessive Use of Raster Images Whenever Possible
Of course, this depends on the nature of the document, but it’s something that should be kept in mind. Modern digital cameras produce high-resolution photos. For example, a camera with a 10-megapixel sensor produces 3872x2592-pixel images, and an image file may take up from 2 to 20 MB, depending on the format and quality settings. So, if you’re using numerous photos in your document, the document file can become excessively large.