Exporting to PDF from ArcGIS Pro is producing large file sizes

[SarahAcMoody]

Hi all,

I've reproduced some of my old map documents in ArcGIS Pro, believing there would be some efficiencies in this.  When I export these layouts to PDF, the resulting files are about 5x larger than the same maps exported out of ArcMap (~5MB vs < 1MB).  The export options are set-up the same in both Pro and ArcMap and I've also experimented with Resolution (dpi) & Image Quality, to no avail. Even at a 96 dpi and "Fastest" imagey quality, I'm getting 5MB PDF's.

Any thoughts? I've looked all around and cannot find any articles addresses this issue.

Thanks!

[emmornile1]

Thanks Jeff,

I had not used that option, and re-exported and the PDF file is now 158 MB, however, the white lines went away, so that is an improvement.

[JeffBarrette]

Hi Emmor, I never got these files. Did you try sending them?

Jeff

[kmsmikrud]

Hello,

I am using Pro 2.3.2 and also noticed larger file sizes or needed to reduce the .pdf maps for use on our website.

The maps consist of vector data and the exports look great. To reduce the .pdf I did the save as reduced file size in Adobe Acrobat and then passed them to our webmaster to post online. I think the webmaster also saved the .pdfs again to reduce file size. I think in the save as reduced file size option it had make compatible with Adobe Acrobat 8.0 and later.

Anyway when the .pdfs were posted on our website and I was completely surprised on what the .pdfs looked like. In Google Chrome the .pdf mostly looked good except the Arial bold font was distorted and not right. In Microsoft Edge the map looked really awful with it being stretched and not displaying right at all. I've attached two screenshots showing the website maps.

Microsoft Edge is the 1st screenshot and then Google Chrome second. Has anybody experienced this? Kory Kramer? Jeff Barrette? Jeremy Wright? I've now exported the .pdfs with the save to image file and that seems to resolve the issue although there a few text items that look better in the original than as an image file. What I don't understand is why this would happen in the first place because sometimes I may not want to export as an image file. Thanks in advance!, Kathy

[JeremyWright]

Kathy,

Open the pdf in adobe reader then hit ctrl-d to open up document properties. Go to the fonts tab. Does the listing say "embedded subset"?

Regards,

Jeremy W.

[kmsmikrud]

Hi Jeremy,

Yes on the embedded subset and I had checked to 'Embed Fonts' on the layout export. Thank-you!

[JeremyWright]

Does the pdf look ok in reader, just not in browsers?

[kmsmikrud]

The exported .pdf both original and the save to reduced file both looked great until they were put in the browser. Firefox might be fine because it just wants to save the .pdf but Edge was so crazy looking. Our webmaster hasn't seen that happen before and we have a lot of ArcMap exported .pdfs currently on the website but likely not too many Pro exports (yet).

[Anonymous User]

I did not find any Ideas on the Ideas site related to this. So I just created one: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-ideas/make-pdf-exported-from-arcgis-pro-smaller-file-size-l...

I also have a call in to Esri Tech support to see what the latest Esri word is on this. I'm using 2.7.0 and still no improvement on PDF file size. 

[Anonymous User]

For anyone following this page: we figured out that "Output as image" rasterizes labels. So the labels look blurry when you print the pdf. So we can't use that.

But I am using ArcGIS Pro 2.8.3 now and our settings are working well: 

No output as image

image compression: Adaptive

Quality: 85

Compress Vector graphics

Vector Resolution: 300 dpi

Raster resample: Best

Embed Fonts

Very helpful hint that our GIS Specialist found: And add basemaps to a group and apply transparency to group or the pdf will have grid lines - https://geodesign.studio/export-arcgis-pro-adobe-illustrator/