Export PDF Files Creates Huge Files

[Alex_Wolf]

Hey Folk.

I’m trying to export a frame in Figma which has noch images, just text, forms, blurry layer…When I export this frame, the file size is around 18MB and I don’t get why?

I’m creating presentations with Figma and when you’ve 50 Slides… Do the math…

Any help here?

[Celine_Figma]

Hi @Alex_Wolf,
Figma only supports PDF exports at 1x , so there wouldn’t be a native option to export assets at a different scale. There are a couple options to workaround this though.

1. This Community plugin helps you to compress PDF files upon export: Compressed PDF Exporter or TinyImage plugin
2. If you don’t mind keeping objects in PDFs as vectors, you can export all frames as JPEG while reducing the scale. Then you can combine them into one PDF with other apps or online tools.
3. You could export from Figma as a 1x PDF and then use an online tool such as Compress PDF or I Love PDF to reduce the size.

Though I can see how supporting this natively would be useful for other users as well, so I’ve noted it for our Product team. I can’t guarantee anything on our end, but I can give it some visibility

Hope it helps!

[agus_pelani]

Its not solved, I have tried those points of your answer … so many takes time to get compression of FDF files

[georgezikos]

I’ve noticed recently that Figma is exporting “optimized” PDF files, in that the file sizes are now much smaller. Am I the only one? I can’t find any information on this being a feature update!

[dvaliao]

Hey @georgezikos, glad to hear your noticed the recent change!

This was actually a quiet launch pushed by the team a couple of weeks ago, but there’s more info from the team available here:

Launched: Export Compressed PDFs

Hey y’all, engineer here at Figma: we just shipped an update to utilize more compression for PDF files. We now compress images using JPEG at 75% quality and compress long text streams using zlib. Example: we had an ~89 Mb file that now exports at ~4 Mb. Different files will have different compression results depending on their contents. Please let us know if you have any questions about this update or other PDF sizing questions. Thank you.

[Jagruti_Jaykar]

Most platforms, require pdf files to be under 5mb. take for example Linkedin Resume upload option. It cannot have even a 5.1 mb pdf. So When I exporting my resume from Figma, it kept exporting it at 7.2 mb. And online compression tools could not lower it below 5.1. Tried them all. What could you possibly to to a file that has only text and some color? This was frustrating. The tool should natively allow for some options.

[Manon_n.k]

Hi @dvaliao, My file containing 28 slides with 4 images, 1 vector image and some smiley images, exporting it to pdf creates a file of 19,5 MB. I just did a test in which I removed all images, so slides only contain text and a few shapes. Considering the content it still it still returns a file size of 15.4 mb… have to go back to using Powerpoint instead

[Cecilia_Marnero]

same here, made my resume. 2 colors, one font, 3 vector icons and I still get 5 Mb even if I compress it’s compressed to 3,9 Mb so is not even worth it. it’s absurd.

[Usama4]

Hi, I really appreciate the subtle update!

I used to compress PDFs exported from Figma using online converters like ILOVEPDF. However, since this recent update, the PDFs I export from Figma still aren’t as compressed as I need them, so when I try to reduce their size using online tools, they often lose color.

This happened a bunch of times. And I don’t remember running into color loss before this update.