Launched: Export Compressed PDFs

Leon · 2021-05-13T15:51:28+00:00

Describe the problem your experiencing and how your idea helps solve this When I export out PDFs and attach them to emails for review for stakeholders who either are not in Figma or just prefer to review and leave notes via PDF mockups, I always have to find a PDF compression solution that can shrink down the sizes. In addition to PDF compression, sometimes merging multiple files into a single document is something that I wish Figma gave some options for when exporting. Add as much context as possible (screenshots, Figma files, mockups, etc.) PDFs exported when they contain some kind of image seem to be quite large, maybe because the whole image is intact and it isn’t cropped down. Or just the quality is retained as close as possible to the Figma quality. Ask questions to bring the community into the conversation (e.g. Does anyone else experience this? Is anyone using a plugin or workaround to help solve this?, etc. I’m not aware of any community plugin that solves this. Are there any out there?

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
May 13, 2021
47 replies
24194 views

Describe the problem your experiencing and how your idea helps solve this
When I export out PDFs and attach them to emails for review for stakeholders who either are not in Figma or just prefer to review and leave notes via PDF mockups, I always have to find a PDF compression solution that can shrink down the sizes. In addition to PDF compression, sometimes merging multiple files into a single document is something that I wish Figma gave some options for when exporting.
Add as much context as possible (screenshots, Figma files, mockups, etc.)
PDFs exported when they contain some kind of image seem to be quite large, maybe because the whole image is intact and it isn’t cropped down. Or just the quality is retained as close as possible to the Figma quality.
Ask questions to bring the community into the conversation
(e.g. Does anyone else experience this? Is anyone using a plugin or workaround to help solve this?, etc.
I’m not aware of any community plugin that solves this. Are there any out there?

Share an idea

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Shiva_Souza

Yes, for me that works with low resolution game art/pixel art, the JPG compression makes Figma impossible to use for what I used to (building samples/pitch decks/art for review and exporting those as PNG)

Keith_Kerr

Hi Ahmed, does this new compression keep text as text in the pdf? I’ve been making my resume in Figma and when I export the pdf seems to write the text as a vector image and makes the files size around 2mb. It’s just text on a page so thinking the file size should be well under a mb if Figma exported the pdf with embedded text.

Ahmed_Abdalla

Figmate

@Keith_Kerr by default, Figma’s PDF exporter will try to export text as text but if it can’t use PDF primitives for writing text it’ll convert things to an image and export that. But we didn’t change this decision making. We just made to sure to compress existing text streams and image streams. It may be that your resume was being exported as an image all along (even if it’s selectable).

Nadin_Tamer

Figmate

Hi y’all! Another engineer at Figma here: we just shipped another update that allows you to choose between High, Medium, and Low quality when exporting to JPEG and PDF. If you select High quality, your PDFs will be exported with no image compression. The default setting for PDFs is still Medium quality, which maintains the compression we previously added to reduce file size. Let us know if you have any questions – thank you!

Aaron_Foldes

Great news! Thanks for keeping this issue on mind! 🦄🫶🏻

LeonAuthor

Amazing! Thank you for your work. I will have to try it out later.

JAS5

New Member

Describe the problem your experiencing and how your idea helps solve this
When I export out PDFs and attach them to emails for review for stakeholders who either are not in Figma or just prefer to review and leave notes via PDF mockups, I always have to find a PDF compression solution that can shrink down the sizes. In addition to PDF compression, sometimes merging multiple files into a single document is something that I wish Figma gave some options for when exporting.
Add as much context as possible (screenshots, Figma files, mockups, etc.)
PDFs exported when they contain some kind of image seem to be quite large, maybe because the whole image is intact and it isn’t cropped down. Or just the quality is retained as close as possible to the Figma quality.
Ask questions to bring the community into the conversation
(e.g. Does anyone else experience this? Is anyone using a plugin or workaround to help solve this?, etc.
I’m not aware of any community plugin that solves this. Are there any out there?

Yes, please improve the Figma PDF export. The file is often very large and difficult to upload into different systems, especially when I try to upload my resume to various web portals. This has become a significant issue. I often spend around 60 minutes trying to adjust it and searching for alternatives to generate a smaller PDF. While I can use tools like Compressify, it shouldn’t require extra steps or additional payments just to get a usable output from Figma. Even when selecting the "low" file size option, the file is still too large. For instance, the file I export from Compressify is 1.5 MB, compared to Figma's "low" export, which is 6.9 MB for just 3 pages of my resume.

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