Using InDesign CC 2020 ver 15.1.1

Exporting an INDD file that contains a link to an EPS image that is 26.8MB. The image is used on multiple occasions through out the piece.

Would expect a PDF on Smallest File Size preset to be smaller than a PDF created at Press Quality preset.

No special steps reproduce this, simply export to PDF using the presets. Did not adjust the downsampling sizes. But when I did this didn't solve the issue.

The reality was that exporting a PDF on Press Quality comes out at 37.6MB and on Smallest File Size is 56.3MB.

I did inform Adobe about this through Twitter and gave them my files to work with. They investigated it and were able to reproduce the issue. They also replied via Twitter that "this behavior exists since CS6. It is reproducible only with documents having heavy EPS links, like the one you shared contains EPS of size 26 MB."

They also asked me to post here.