Large PDF file sizes when exporting from InDesign

Hi,
I was wondering if anyone knew why some PDF file sizes are so large when exporting from ID.
I create black and white user manuals with ID CS3. We post these online, so I try to get the file size down as much as possible.
There is only one .psd image in each manual. The content does not have any photographs, just Illustrator .eps diagrams and line drawings. I am trying to figure out why some PDF file sizes are so large.
Also, why the file sizes are so different.
For example, I have one ID document that is 3MB.
Exporting it at the smallest file size, the PDF file comes out at 2MB.
Then I have another ID document that is 10MB.
Exporting to PDF is 2MB (the same size as the smaller ID document)... this one has many more .eps's in it and a lot more pages.
Then I have another one that the ID size is 8MB and the PDF is 6MBwhy is this one so much larger than the 10MB ID document?
Any ideas on why this is happening and/or how I can reduce the file size.
I've tried adjusting the export compression and other settings but that didn't work.
I also tried to reduce them after the fact in Acrobat to see what would happen, but it doesn't reduce it all that much.
Thanks for any help,
Cathy

> Though, the sizes of the .eps's are only about 100K to 200K in size and they are linked, not embedded.
But they're embedded in the PDF.
> It's just strange though because our marketing department as an 80 page full color catalog that, when exported it is only 5MB. Their ID document uses many very large .tif files. So, I am leaning toward it being an .eps/.ai issue??
Issue implies there's something wrong, but I think this is just the way
it's supposed to work.
Line drawings, while usually fairly compact, cannot be lossy compressed.
The marketing department, though, may compress their very large TIFF
files as much as they like (with a corresponding loss of quality). It's
entirely possible to compress bitmaps to a smaller size than the
drawings those bitmaps were made from. You could test this yourself.
Just open a few of your EPS drawings in Photoshop, save as TIFF, place
in ID, and try various downsampling schemes. If you downsample enough,
you'll get the size of the PDF below a PDF that uses the same graphics
as line drawing EPS files. But you may have to downsample them beyond
recognition...
Kenneth Benson
Pegasus Type, Inc.
www.pegtype.com

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