Large PDF exports even with compression plugins?

Hey there @Kayeish, thanks for the feedback! We definitely know that our PDF exports could use a little work especially when it comes to optimizing their size. Some users have reported that using 3rd party tools outside of Figma have helped when plugins aren’t quite enough. For example if you’re on a Mac, you could open in Preview and then export again as a PDF to further cut down on size.

I know this probably isn’t ideal, but hope this helps. 🙂

Oh one other thing you could check within your file is to make sure your svg icons are flattened or as simple as possible.

@Josh Thanks for the response.

I’ve used Preview and its Reduce File Size export and it’s still 2.8MB. I’ve used other third-party apps (Adobe) and none of them can get me lower than 2MB. This is actually quite an issue because of file upload restrictions are often set at 2MB for documents.

Do you know if the Figma team are actively working to resolve this?

Ah bummer that the workarounds aren’t helping in this instance. : /
PDF improvements aren’t currently prioritized but I’m happy to pass this feedback along to the team. Also I’d be happy to take a look at the file (if you’re able to share it) and see if I can offer any other suggestions to reduce the size.

That’d be great, let me know how best to send to you for suggestions.

Feel free to PM me the file or post here in this thread. 🙂

@Kayeish
You can use our plugin, we do not export vectors and text as images, so the size should be significantly smaller.
However, we have not implemented any effects yet, like shadows…
MKitFPdf

Thanks for the recommendation. While the PDF is very small with your plugin (53KB), the formatting is all messed up—thus making it unusable.

@Kayeish
The formatting should not be incorrect.
However, we cannot currently access the local fonts, so this could be the cause. You would have to define the missing fonts under “Fonts”.
Could you send me an example to test?

@Miek I’m using Space Grotesk, which is natively available in Figma and not a local font. The formatting is all messed up, so I believe it’s an issue on your plugin end.

Thanks for the tip, yes there are problems with the “Space Grotesk” font, unfortunately it is not recognised correctly.

Cool. Lemme know if you’ve fixed it and I can try again. Would love to have a better compression PDF plugin.

New version is online

I tried the MKitPdf and I was able to compress my pdf from 1.3 MB to 26 KB. I struggled so much to do this! Thank you so much 🙂

@josh SO bummed to hear that dealing with PDF size is not a priority for Figma. It is a huge issue for us and our clients. We need PDFs to be 25mb so clients can email them and Figma PDFs, even compressed, are consistently over that size for most of our projects. Our clients need PDFs for legal reviews.

It’s too bad Figma isn’t working on this problem. I too have encountered that files saved by Figma cannot be mailed. Even though they don’t contain any bitmap graphics at all

@Josh Seeing that other users (here and in other threads) are having the same issue, is there any way to raise this higher on the dev’s list of to-dos?

Same problem here @Miek . Resolving this problem would enable our organisation using Figma for social media (LinkedIn Pdf). 🙂

I have a problem with the ‘Lato’ font, I get text wrap, can you do something about it? I’ll buy you a coffee. Even more!

Please send me a Figma file(link) with the problem.

Exactly the same here. PDF’s in Figma are extremely large, even when using images that are only a few kb. I need to compress everything outside Figma, and it’s such an annoying extra step to do. I just want to export small PDF’s so I can e-mail them to clients.

Hi @Esther_UX we ran into this issue as well. We built Compressed PDF & Image Exporter which runs directly in Figma, and also lets you easily reorder PDF pages. This plugin will let you save around 90% of the file size without visually decreasing the quality.

Try it out-- wed love to hear your thoughts.

This issue of size is so frustrating - most CV uploaders have a max file size of 2MB and I can’t get mine below 2.4 using online compression tools. I can’t seem to use the plugin recommended earlier in the thread as it doesn’t recognise my fonts, even though I’m using arial! 🤨

Considering re-writing my CV in Google. I’ve wasted so much time on this, and it’s impacting my job search.

Massively disappointed.

Hi @Taylor_Osborn . Thank you for suggesting the compressor plugin. Actually I’ve tried the plugin before writing my previous post. The plugin does a very good job at compressing the PDF to a normal size.

Unfortunately there are still parts of that plugin that makes me not want to use it. When exporting, all the pages are in a random order, no matter what I do in my Figma file (like changing the order of the frames). My PDF’s are often over 30 pages. The plugin offers a method to change the order of pages, but it’s a hassle to do so and doesn’t work quite user friendly. It’s still a lot of work and it currently makes compressing outside Figma the faster option.

Another thing I noticed is the plugin does change colors of images. That’s undesirable, as I need to use the PDF-files for clients in a professional way. If the plugin has any updates that solve this, reach out to me! 🙂 I’d be happy to use it once it fixes these issues as described above.

Hi @Esther_UX, I think you might be referring to a different compression app.

Compressed PDF and Image Exporter, (pictured below,) lets you reorder / add / remove PDF pages in the app before compressing everything. It can also export compressed images, webp, pngs with transparency, and jpgs with quality settings offering different amounts of compression.

As for the color changes-- unfortunately it is pretty much guaranteed that any form of compression will impact color fidelity. The way compression works is by more efficiently organizing colors and pixels and creating larger groupings of like colors. This is largely why compressed assets are a smaller file size.

Hi @Taylor_Osborn , I indeed have confused your plugin with another plugin for compressing files. It looks really similar, oops. I am aware of the unavoidable color change when compressing, but I already put images in Figma that are below 100kB in size, so there shouldn’t be much more compressing needed there.

I haven’t used your suggested plugin yet, but am currently working on a document that needs exporting next week. Since there’s only 40 free pages to export each a month, I’ll wait to see if it works the way I prefer. If so, I’ll try & convince my boss in taking a subscription 🙂 It would be an amazing feature to be able to select the maximum mb’s it can export to for like mailing programs (instead of guessing the % of compression and using precious pages each month to figure it out).

I’ll try not to forget to share my experience with the plugin next week!