PagePlus X5: Gradient fill - why so big?

[NickH]

In short: trying to reduce the size of my PDFs.
A single page with a couple of photos, a couple of images and some text and some (9) gradient fill shapes for highlighting is publishing a PDF of 1.5meg at lowest resolutions settings.
I have discovered the large file size is down to the gradient fill shapes.
If I change the shapes to solid fill the PDF comes out at 100k.
If I export the shapes as png images and import them back to replace the shapes the PDF comes out at 140k.
I have 60 similar pages making up a catalogue and I would rather not have to go through the process of replacing hundreds of shapes with images.
Question: Why would the gradient fill take up so much memory and is there a setting I can use at publish time which will have the same effect of reducing the PDF size?
I hope this makes sense and thanks for any suggestions.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

We need a sample document, and also need to know the PDF profile that you're using.

You wouldn't need to export the gradient fill object and reimport it — you could just use Convert to Picture.

The attached PDF was produced using the default PDF profile. The size is just 2K whether I use PPX5 or PPX6 to produce it. The PagePlus file is 24K

[NickH]

For this example I used Acrobat 5.0 Web - Compact. I placed a Quick Ellipse, removed the border and applied gradient ellipse fill. PDF is 250K! Changed to solid fill and it's 1k. The third attachment is a result of staying up half the night trying different options I eventually checked the "Render complex fills as bitmaps" box and this had the desired result (although I don't know what the side effects of this will be).
So I have now reduced my 34Mb document to 7Mb. Result. Thanks for your reply.