Oct 8, 2008
Reducing Adobe Illustrator bloated files
Since Illustrator CS3 was launched I noticed a dramatic file size increase, even in small logo documents. I found a work-around to make logo files be under 100k instead of around a minimum of 900k.
Open, not place, a jpg in Illustrator. Once it’s opened, delete the jpg from the work area. Then paste in whatever vector you want. Then save the document with an appropriate name. Ta dah! Smaller file size. From what I can tell, the file size is so much smaller because opening a jpg doesn’t load all the bloated swatches, symbols, brushes, etc into the base document.