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Now this is not an issue I generally care about too much or run into very often unless I'm making a product for Etsy because of their file size limitations. However, While I was making my latest digital planner, InDesign was absolutely grinding to a halt and refusing to export to pdf. I'm still working on a solution to this, but doing a dozen troubleshooting steps, it dawned in my thick head that maybe my files were just too big.
So I had a look through my list of about 50 files and a majority of them were huge. HUGE. Like 177MB per file huge. I've learned a trick or two from sticking these wideboys on a diet so thought I'd share here.
1. Do not embed your images
This one is an obvious one unless you're new to working with illustrator. As Illustrator is a vector programme, it doesn't cope too well with having jpegs embedded. If it is already embedded, hit unembed at the top left of your window and save it as a png/jpeg/psd whatever you want, just as long as it's saved somewhere else.
Now go up to file>place, select your image and bung it in where you want it in your document. This way it shows up in your screen but it is a linked image that connects to the file rather than being part of the file. Think of it like hanging a picture in a frame on your wall rather than painting directly on the wall. Very easy to change or adjust the image when it's in a frame too. Much more work to change a mural.
2. Is your linked file an appropriate size?
Is it the right size for the destination and in the correct dpi/ppi for your intended output? For example If your artboard size is 100x100px, if you have an image to be used on web there is absolutely no point having a placed image that is 2000x2000px and 300ppi. Go into photoshop and sort this out (image>image size). You generally have a lot more leeway than you imagine with reducing the size of the image before you run into quality issues. Personally even with my planners that will be viewed on an ipad I tend to keep it around 150 ppi - because on retina screens, 72 just doesn't look THAT good, but, you do you boo.
If your intended output is web also make sure you export it so it is optimised for web. The best way (in my humble opinion) to do this is to go to file>export>save for web (legacy). I don't know why they have this as a legacy option because for me it's by far the clearest way of tweaking your export to see clearly the size and quality it will be.
3. Effects are the bad cholesterol of illustrator files
Anything ANYTHING with a blur or glow is going to bloat your file like crazy. Most of the time as a designer you won't find yourself in a situation where you have to sacrifice style for substance. Sacrificing style for 108 client-based reasons absolutely, but size limitations is not something I have run into often in over a decade.
That being said, if you really do need to drop a serious amount of weight from a file, taking a hatchet to your applied styles should be your first port of call after dealing with your image embed situation. I'm not sure how much drop shadow impacts file size, I'll be honest - I've not had to deal with that in this particular anti-bloat crusade. But, based on what I've seen with every other effect I've used, I'd go with probably yes, especially if it's blurred. Gradients, transparencies, rounded corners etc seem to be fine but definitely anything from the effects panel - in the photoshop section in particular- is going to pack on the MBs.
If your design means you cannot sacrifice your blur, I recommend either pasting that object into photoshop and linking to it; or duplicating your artboard, removing everything on it except your background image and any of the blurs/glow effects, and save that out as a background image. Go back to your first artboard, remove any vector blurs from your objects/text, and then place your new background image with the blurs incorporated in place behind it all. This is hard to explain so here's an example of a background image with blurs vs the final page with the vector objects over the top
(plug: This is from my neon softgirl planner)
If you check out my planner you'll see I've applied this technique throughout the planner and I eventually managed to get my export size for a 2k+ page document in indesign from almost 100MB down to 15.7MB!
I'm sure there's a 'proper' way to do this - this is quite a gaffer-tape fix, but to be honest with you - I don't have time to spend feckin' around with it. If it works it works. I'm not building the Empire State here. This will likely give you a decent quality blur behind but also the sharpness of the text, which won't save out clearly, in my experience, if you're saving out as a pdf after placing your EPS into indesign.
Below is an example of just how much these effects bloat your file. These two files are identical.
This is what was in my file:
Two words of expanded text
2 live text boxes
1 linked jpeg image (155kb 72ppi)
10 tiny star shapes 20x20px each with a subtle glow effect applied.
In the file view below, EOY-ttl.eps clocks in at a whopping 117.2MB. It has the glow and raster effect applied to stars. EOY-ttl-01.eps Is the same file, with the glow and raster effects removed. The effect was so subtle you don't even notice it's gone. But the result is a file that is 108MB smaller.
Let me say that again:
The result is a file that is 108 MB smaller
4. Tidy up your layers and make sure you've actually removed the effects and elements you don't want
So I'm churning through about 50 designed pages here, and I can't tell you the number of times I've been scratching my head wondering why the hell my file size is STILL 40mb+ when I've barely got anything left on the screen.
Open your appearance panel and click on everything and see what you have going on there.
Look for applied effects that you've forgotten about. Like me, maybe you removed the blur effect but forgot you had rasterised it. I discovered that I had redundant 'rasterize' effects applied to two objects. I removed the 'rasterize' effects and my file size reduced by 20MB.
Do you have stuff hidden in clipping masks either on your artboard of off to one side but invisible? Hit cmd+Y to view outlines to find them more easily or scroll through your layers.
The two squares off to the side here are an example of what it would look like to have a clipping mask with an invisible object inside on the pasteboard. You wouldn't even see this unless you hit cmd+y and it could solve the mystery of why your file size is so big
Maybe you even have an empty clipping mask that's redundant? I found that I had inadvertently placed a correctly sized image in a clipping mask that absolutely didn't need to be in a clipping mask. I was scratching my head for a good 20 minutes trying to figure out why an image under 1000x1000px 72ppi image placed into an empty artboard with one line of text over the top of it was creating a file that was 75Mb big. Once I'd deleted the mask, placed the image straight onto the artboard and saved out, my new eps was 8mb.
5. Declutter your workspace
If you're anything like me the outside of your artboard will be a dumping ground for font testing, inspo images, colour swatches and god knows what else. Like this:
Delete all that shit. All of it.
Also getting rid of extraneous brushes, swatches etc all help to slim down your file. It sounds like an absolute pain in the balls to do, but there's actually an action that makes this take seconds. Go into Window>Actions and in the Default actions, hit 'delete unused panel items' and press play. Done. Boom.
Don't expect miracles with this one, but just like Tesco keeps telling us: 'every little helps'.
Now go forth and slash your file size!
Bonus tip
I have to credit my best friend with this one: I had spent the entire day making the above changes to my files to shrink them down and I knew I had changed them from being in the hundreds of MB to being under 20MB, but when I went back into finder later in the day it looked like I hadn't made any changes. Try right clicking a file and 'get info' and check the file size there. The icon was telling me a file was 170mb but the 'get info' window confirmed that I had actually reduced it to 8. I couldn't figure out wtf was going on but my bestie told me to force quit finder and restart it. Problem solved. Magically everything changed to the sizes they should be. This isn't really a fix fix but more of a bug fix (I'm on an M1 macbook pro which is just one big shiny bug ridden mess that gives me eyestrain. I have never regretted buying an apple product more)
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