Comparison Scribus 1.5.8 - Indesign CS6

[micha1451]

Hello everyone,
I did a PDF-Export-comparison between Scribus and Indesign:
Page A3,
4c-images ISO coated-v2 300,
export as PDF-X4.
Preflight: Adobe X Pro

Both checked PDF's were ok. What's strange is that the scribus pdf is significantly larger.
Is this a known effect?
PDF Indesign  6.6 MB
PDF Scribus  39.4 MB

Thanks
Michael

[AdmFubar]

I'd say show us the settings used in scribus pdf, and or a link to the file so we can test it out.
and links to the pdf's as well

[PatJr]

just a stab in the dark
lots of images in the document?
Indesign could be down sampleing the images?

[Nermander]

I am not sure it it is still the case, but I think at least in the past Scribus placed each glyph individually (giving very precise typesetting), maybe Indesign just places the cursor for each line of text and then outputs the text line by line instead of glyph by glyph?

[micha1451]

Thanks for the answers!
Hopefully the attached link is helpful

dropbox

[PatJr]

I changed the compression to Lossy and color to Printer and set the pdf to 1.3
cut it down to 17MB still a lot more the 6.6MB

[a.l.e]

yes, the linked files help!

one of the big differences between indesign and scribus is, that indesign will (probably) cut out the part of the images that are not shown in the pdf document. scribus never does it.

with scribus (and i guess also with indesign...) you can open the pdf you have produced and check the images inside of it. in some cases this helps you understand what happened during the export process.

btw, this will also show you that scribus does save the text as such (and does not convert it to single vector glyphs, like it did under certain circumstances in the past).

btw, it should "easy" to create a python script that crops the images before creating the pdf and then restores the full blown ones in the scribus document.
i can help there, but i'd need the collaboration of somebody who can check that the cut images do not lose any of their features (and can provide different types of images for the tests).

[micha1451]

Thank you all!

In Indesign PDF export setting I had acitvated "Fit content to frame". That's probably the explanation of different data size.

I did another Indesign test, it rather confused me a little bit.

Indesign variants

But because it's an Indesign topic, and it doesn't matter here.

Since my little project is only a 13-page calendar, the larger amount of data of Scribus PDFs doesn't matter. Working with Scribus is a pleasure.

Have a nice day.

Michael