【bug report】file size becomes much bigger after comment

[cherishlc]

Sometimes file size becomes much bigger after I comment the pdf-file. When I export the comments, delete them in the original file, and re-import them, the file size is much smaller than before.
I think it's a small but important bug. Hope you'll fix it soon. Thanks~

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello cherishlc,

Thanks for your post.
Could you please attach a sample file showing this?

Also do you have East Asian Fonts installed on your machine?
If yes - try using a font that supports only Latin characters - and your commented files should get much smaller.

Best,
Stefan

[cherishlc]

Hello cherishlc,

Thanks for your post.
Could you please attach a sample file showing this?

Also do you have East Asian Fonts installed on your machine?
If yes - try using a font that supports only Latin characters - and your commented files should get much smaller.

Best,
Stefan

I'm a Chinese. There are some East Asian Fonts, but as I said, files with same comments are not the same size! e.g. 108KB vs 10MB. The larger one can't be uploaded. Please leave your E-mail and I'll send it to you.

I think that the bug is how the comments stored in the disk. I don't know whether or not It's related to the order that I comment the file. Something like comment page 99 and then go back to comment something in page 1.

reImportcomment.pdf

originalFile.pdf

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi cherishlc,

thanks fr that. Please send the large file to support@pdf-xchange.com and be sure to cross reference this forum thread.

regards

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Got the file,

thanks. We will get back to you here with what we find.

Sincerely

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi cherishlc,

after discussing this with the development team it seems that you have encountered an issue with an older build. Currently exporting and importing the FDF will not reduce the file size. This is because when there is a little as a single Chinese character in a comment the full font will be embedded into the PDF. You can try it with build 207 (current) and the file size will remain after importing the FDF.

We had to change the way we did this because it was causing problems. Take a look at your re-imported (small) PDF. the Chinese comment will not display in Adobe Reader. The fix for this was to force embedding the full font set.

The good news is that in V3 we will be able to embed only the subset of the font, meaning only the font definitions for the characters actually used. This will ensure the document is correct in other readers and will keep the file size as small as possible.

In the current version you can keep the file size smaller by restricting yourself to English comments.

hth

[cherishlc]

Thanks for your reply and hard work.
The small one display correctly in my computer, since I have all the fonts installed.
Looking forward to V3, and hopefully there will be some options to select whether or not to embed the fonts in the comments.

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello cherishlc,

Yes the small file looks OK on your machine - as it's the same that placed the comments and you have the exact same font for use by all applications, but it's not guaranteed to do so on another machine.

As for the solution described for V3 - it will be automatically enabled to only embed subset of fonts for the characters needed.

Best,
Stefan

[refract]

I cannot claim a "bug," but I sure would like some answers to file size growing and growing and growing.

1. I used 197 images of text and got a PDF file size of 2.66MB. That is wonderful, less than 3MB.

2. I realized the pages need cropping so I do and run the document through the Printer 2012 Lite driver. Wow! It comes back as 85MB, which is about 35 times larger. There will be no emailing with attached file.

3. Desperate, I go to plan B and run the file through iWesoft's PDF Compressor. Ugh! It is only reduced about 18% or down to 65MB.

4. Frantic, I now run the file through the Tracker Printer Driver 4 Lite still on my machine. My Goodness! The file is bumped back up to 79MB.

Clearly, I am in over my head. All I wanted to do is a little cropping and I have turned a monster lose.

Thoughts, please...

[rmcmanamy]

No expert but without seeing the original file it's hard to say but start by checking the resolution that you have the driver set to. Also check if the PDF-XChange Viewer is set to Print As Image. When you print to a print driver through Windows the images are sent out as the dpi of the printer driver, not the dpi that they originally were in the PDF.

The basics (not taking into account compression ratios) of images though say that if you double the resolution the size goes up by 4. So if the print driver is set to 300 dpi and the original images were 96 dpi the rough file size would increase by 9.7% (300*300)/(96*96). If set to 600 dpi it would be 39%.

Then you also get differences between color/grayscale/monochrome. A color image might be 8 times the size of the monochrome image, again depending on compression and such.

If the viewer is set to Print As Image then it will send the entire page out as an image even if say the actual image in the PDF only takes up half of the page.

[John - Tracker Supp]

There are so many factors potentially that could account for this - (and Rodney has helpfully outlined a few) - that a sample file is going to be essential - even if it is the original before the bloat and we can take a look from there to recreate your steps.

thanks