Adobe Acrobat XI changes file version automatically after pages are deleted from the document

Question

I've got a version 1.4 PDF created by using the R-function "pdf". The file contains six pages and has 135 KB. Now I want each of these pages in a separate file in order to include it as picture in Latex. Since I have not only the Adobe Reader deleting pages isn't a problem, but after a page is deleted from the document Adobe Acrobat automatically changes the version to 1.6, which then causes problems in Latex.

I've now tried to save it as version 1.4 PDF, which itself isn't a problem, but the file size then increases from 28 KB to 759 KB and my final PDF mustn't be larger than 3 MB. I've already played a bit with the compression settings, but the size doesn't really change. Why does Adobe change the version automatically and how can I extract the pages without blowing up the size that much?

Answer 1

Acrobat is always setting the PDF version to its own level, even if the file itself would be compliant to an earlier standard. It has been doing so since Acrobat 2…

You can control quite a few things when you do Save as… --> Optimized PDF . There you can also set the standard at which the document is saved, and many more things.

About the file size, it really depends on what your document contains. It is also possible that your PDF creation tool creates an incomplete document, and saving it in Acrobat will create a more complete one (think of embedded fonts, etc.).