Looking for advice

[heernumurr]

I've been given a great opportunity by a small local design business, doing some smaller projects for them. Just finished my first one, an A5 flyer which they seem pretty happy with. My question is about the final file format. They want me to email them the pdfs, but i was wondering just how big a file they should be? The two pdfs are 18MB and 32MB which seems huge to me, and way more than my hotmail account will let me send. Is this about right for an 150 x 212 300dpi pdf, and if so does anyone know of a better email provider or another way to send them?

[Mac the Knife]

Why not FTP them to a file repository site and tell your contact, "I'm sorry, I'm not equipped to handle this large a file via e-mail, but I'll gladly point you to a URL from which you can get it via download?"

[fiasco!]

I've been given a great opportunity by a small local design business, doing some smaller projects for them. Just finished my first one, an A5 flyer which they seem pretty happy with. My question is about the final file format. They want me to email them the pdfs, but i was wondering just how big a file they should be? The two pdfs are 18MB and 32MB which seems huge to me, and way more than my hotmail account will let me send. Is this about right for an 150 x 212 300dpi pdf, and if so does anyone know of a better email provider or another way to send them?

I use You Send It for purposed like this. I find the average client can't figure out how the hell to use ftp.

www.yousendit.com

[RedEye]

Joel has the right idea... there other sites out there, mailbigfile.com, sendthisfile.com... that allow you to send large files via the web as well... not sure ho well some of these work though.

As for the file size... depends greatly on program the file was created in... the complexity of the elements (i.e. vector based images vs. raster, embedded photos and fonts etc. etc.)

That size isn't unheard of... although I recently sent a PDF to the printer for a rather complex catalog created in InDesign CS3 that was 12 plus cover and used 18 large tiffs and it's final size was only 41 MB for catalog guts and 22 MB for a file with 8 different sets of covers, all using full page size photos in Tiff format.... so I DO wonder why your file is THAT big.. but .....

Again... the project's individual characteristics will play a role i file size as does the program you are exporting the PDF from.

[andrewharrington]

I don't think your file should be that big, but YouSendIt is pretty good for moving large files.

[PSUdraw]

Well I know with work that Acrobat professional has an optimize feature that reduces size but I never printed file after using that feature.

[heernumurr]

Thanks for the tips on sending the file. My main concern was why the file was so big in the first place. This is really the first time i've used Illustrator for a whole project so maybe I'm missing something. I'll give you a run down:

150mm x 212mm 300 dpi

About 15 vector paths and 2 large images (png)

Some type in small ttf

All using around 5 layers

This is giving me an exported pdf of about 18MB, using zip compression and without preserving editing. I'm not gonna pretend i knkow the best way to compress the document, so it could be im not compressing enough, or i thought it might be the number of layers. Any tips on what setting to use when saving as pdf would be much appreciated!