Hundreds of Duplicate Embedded Fonts in PDF Makes it HUGE

Question

Hundreds of Duplicate Embedded Fonts in PDF Makes it HUGE

Hello!

I have a document (word docx file) that is over 150+ pages long. When I print to Adobe Acrobat Pro - it crashes. When I open the document in Preview, it looks fine - but after saving the file as a PDF, the file size is HUGE (over 250+ mb in size). It contains no images, and only a handful of fonts.

The huge PDF file opens fine with Preview and Acrobat after saving it from Preview. So, I uploaded it to my printer's servers (Lulu, the document is a manuscript), and a few days later I get a RIP error during the printing process. Lulu reports they can not print the PDF.

So, I spent many hours trying several other solutions - including saving as a postscript file directly - but the files always end up being huge. Finally, this morning, I thought to inspect the PDF file created by Preview... and I found that there were literally thousands of duplicate embedded fonts in the PDF file. Garamond, for example, was embedded over 15,000 times...

I can't seem to get Adobe's postscript printer to work in OSX 10.5 with this file (it crashes due to a memory overload). Also, the Preview file always includes thousands of duplicate fonts embedded (is this a Quartz Filter issue?)

ANY help would be appreciated. Basically what I want to do is have OSX produce a normal PDF with each font only embedded once.

Anyone have any clues?

(I've tried ghostscript, PDFshrinker, different quartz filters, etc... can't seem to figure this out...)

iMac 2Ghz 2GB, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Jun 29, 2010 6:55 AM

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Answer 1

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,578 points

Jun 29, 2010 7:42 AM in response to Jonathan L Jacobs

Hi Jonathan,

Open the PDF in Acrobat Pro. Choose File > Save as. From the Format: field, choose "Adobe PDF Files, Optimized". Click on the Settings button. Click on the Fonts heading in the left column. If the optimizer hasn't already done so, highlight all duplicate fonts in the Embedded Fonts window and click the Unembed button between that and the right hand window. Remove all but one typeface of each version (bold, italic, etc.) To make the file even a bit smaller, turn on the check box for "Subset all embedded fonts". Click OK. That will bring you back to the Save As dialogue box. Give it a new name if you wish and click Save.

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Answer 2

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,578 points

Jun 29, 2010 7:12 PM in response to Jonathan L Jacobs

I'd guess at this point the PDF is damaged. It clearly is loaded up with fonts, yet Adobe Acrobat Pro doesn't see them. How did you create this document originally? Can you start over from the source and create a new one?

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Answer 3

Jun 29, 2010 3:00 PM in response to Kurt Lang

Thank Kurt. I've tried the Optimize PDF option before, and Adobe Chokes and Dies on it. Acrobat Pro works for 1 - 2 hours @ 99% processor capacity, taking up all my system ram, and then qieutly crashes without even an Apple Crash Reporter window. Strange... Of course.. the PDF is broken... so perhaps that's why; but I don't understand why my Quartz filters are cuasing this (and only this) PDF to be so HUGE. I tried counting the number of embebbed fonts this morning... and there are literally over a thousand (but only about 4 fonts used in the document)....

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Answer 4

Jun 29, 2010 6:54 PM in response to Jonathan L Jacobs

OK. I've followed the route that you suggested, and it didn't crash while "examining" the PDF. However, I was able to use the PDF Optimizer's menu to check the Audit Space... and, 88% of the document is fonts; but in the Font embedding window (where you suggested I move them to the remove/unembedded column) no Fonts are listed. I've uploaded a screenshot to (linked below) for clarity.

http://bit.ly/bivAkS

I'm stumped. Perhaps I should pay out and have createpdf.adobe.com make the PDF directly. Apparently my iMac (with just this file) can't do it without embedding thousands of duplicate fonts...

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Answer 5

Jun 29, 2010 7:18 PM in response to Kurt Lang

The original document is a Word 2008 file (.docx), it's 158 pages long 90% text and some images (the results are the same even if I remove them).
Open the document in Word.
Click File->Print->Preview. (Printing to Acrobat Pro's postscript printer does not work in Leopard... at least not mine)
Once Preview opens, I click File->Save; choose PDF->Generic PDF/X Document
It takes about an hour to save the document. The resulting PDF is ~250+ MB in size.
Open the PDF in Preview. It's a bit sluggish; but looks 100% fine.
Open the Document in Adobe Acrobat -- same: looks great; but a bit sluggish when you page flip.
If I upload the file to Lulu -- I get a RIP Error (i.e.: they won't/can't print it). Document inspection reveals hundreds of bloated duplicate fonts...

any clues? Am I doing something wrong?

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Answer 6

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,578 points

Jun 29, 2010 7:35 PM in response to Jonathan L Jacobs

Just to try it without the images. Instead of using Acrobat, when you select Print, go to the lower left and use OS X's built in Save as PDF. OS X automatically embeds any fonts used. With any luck, it will only embed them once.

What I've seen happen from Word to Acrobat, is that every time the font changes, it adds the font again. So if you go from normal to bold, then back to normal, that's three times the fonts gets embedded right there. Continue adding for every single typeface change. I don't know why it does this or what triggers it.

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Answer 7

Jun 30, 2010 4:41 AM in response to Kurt Lang

I believe I have found the problem. Something from what you wrote made me think about how OS X fonts are really "pretty" -- after looking into it... the tech term is that OSX uses "ligatures" between characters in fonts that have them. Wel... ALL the fonts I use include these so-called ligatures, which can cause problems when the Word Doc is viewed on Windows machines... i didn't think this would matter with PDF's... but.. I went back into Word,switched to "publisher view" (which is the only way to access Word's ligatures option) turned Ligatures OFF and then produced the PDF as usual

VOILA!!!

The PDF was 80mb, and all the fonts were embedded ONCE each. After running Adobe Acrobat Pro's PDF Optimizer for Prepress the file dropped to 20MB!

I've uploaded it to LULU... I'm fairly sure this will work

THANK YOU for the discussion... I'm not sure what it was; (it was late at night)... but this discussion has really helped!

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Answer 8

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,578 points

Jun 30, 2010 5:42 AM in response to Jonathan L Jacobs

I'm not sure what it was; (it was late at night)... but this discussion has really helped!

Ha! I know what you mean. The answer never really appears in the discussion, but for whatever reason, it jogs a thought you'd overlooked before.

Glad you got it figured out. 🙂

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