Preview.app increases PDF file size.

I am having a similarly infuriating problem -- simply removing or reordering pages in Preview causes massive increases in file size (10-20x the original size).

Using a quartz filter to reduce the file size helps somewhat (back down to maybe 2x their original size), but is a huge waste of time when we deal with hundreds of these files a week.

Is Preview really so buggy it is unable to do this simple task, and we need to get everyone copies of Acrobat Pro and train them all on it? Or is there some simple solution to prevent Preview from bloating file sizes when removing or reordering PDF pages?

That is not normal. same action with acrobat and skim do not do this. Changing file size from 170mb to 780mb (my case) should not be expected.

Preview re-formats the file (which takes a while the first "save"). It may even make scrolling and searching for text faster, but is not desirable all the time.

There is NO explanation from Apple in help or online. Keeping things simple is one thing, having unexpected and unexplained behavior is another.

Last preview update made it pretty much useless for annotations anyways.

Choosing "text" annotation used to allow for clicking anywhere on the pdf and start typing. Now, it automatically creates a text box at the center of page that has to be the dragged (and make sure not dragging other annotations with it). click T multiple times, multiple text boxes on top of each other.

I never thought I would look at Windows users with jealousy. What a bad job they are doing.

Can you use Acrobat Pro X instead of Preview to add the annotations? Maybe Acrobat will preserve the shrinkage.

jdskee wrote:

When making changes to a PDF (in my case, creating annotations), Preview.app will increase the file size of a PDF if that PDF was run through Acrobat Pro's "Reduce File Size" process.

That's normal; the PDF is essentially re-created when you save it after annotating it.

You have three options.

(1) Eliminate Preview from your workflow. Annotate it in Acrobat.

(2) Annotate it in Preview, then reduce the file size in Acrobat, rather than the other way around.

(3) Try Preview's own size reduction algorithm: Save As… > Quartz Filter > Reduce File Size.

Try all three, and choose whichever gives best results or fits best your workflow.

It's incredible, but I've run into this on many files. It only hits files that were already large. I'm working with scanned files from old manuals - I don't know if it's specific to scanned files, or what.

I am now using PDFpen Pro for my editing. It's ok to open small files in Preview, but the darned out-save feature means that even opening a file can sometimes enlarge its size, then save it.

Another work-around if you have this: set up Adobe Acrobat with your options for how to shrink files.

Definitely an amazing bug.

Must add. scrolling is smoother in windows via Parallels Desktop (with less resources) that natively in Preview.

Apple keeps bragging about students using Mac. This needs to be fixed.

Company gets big, customer concerns lose their value.

Same here. Preview doubles the file size after saving.

It's pretty annoying, Apple needs to fix this.