Huge file size after annotations

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Level 1

18 points

Huge file size after annotations

I have seen many similar questions but no answer to this problem.

I have PDF files that reached a size of 200-400 mb, while originally around 5 mb, after adding annotations with apple pencil using the Preview app. Scrolling through pages has become extremely slow (sometimes takes 3-5 seconds to change page) and, of course, the disk starts getting full (I am annotating many scientific paper).

Switched to a third party app (PDF Expert) recently and the problem seems to not appear there.

Is the Preview app that inefficient?

iPad Air, iPadOS 14

Posted on Oct 6, 2020 1:51 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

mi1234

Level 1

9 points

Nov 30, 2020 9:52 AM in response to orestis112

200 mb is the least of it. I have two textbooks that are passing 2 GB. I agree it’s probably due to the accuracy of the Apple Pencil’s drawings but it seems like no effort was put into compressing this. This is resulting in PDFs refusing to open or taking extremely long to sync. Apple should really fix this ASAP.

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Answer 2

orestis112 Author

Level 1

18 points

Nov 30, 2020 10:15 AM in response to mi1234

I have since long switched to PDF Expert. This one of the many (software and hardware related) cases where Apple has proved too inadequate for me.

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Answer 3

Nov 19, 2020 11:53 PM in response to orestis112

Same issue. I am using IPad Air 4 on iOS 14, and Apple Pencil 2. After marking up about 30 pages of a pdf, the file size is now 1.5GB and the file does not immediately save after edits when using the “open in books” option. My guess is that Apple Pencil causes very very detailed drawing data, and the drawing graphics needs to be either compressed or “smoothed” to reduce their size. A HUGE oversight by Apple IMO, since this prevents people from replacing physician paper with pdf’s in cases that require a lot of handwriting within PDF documents.

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Huge file size after annotations

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