Have you ever tried to email someone a PDF file only to have it rejected by the email system because the file size is too large? After this happened to me for the umpteenth time, I asked one of our student staff members what to do. In no time flat, she’d come up with five different ways to shrink the file size of a PDF. Today, I put all five methods to the test and came up with my favorites:
Method 1: Use Document > Reduce File Size in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
- Open your PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
- From the menu bar, choose Document, then Reduce File Size.
- Choose your compatibility level (my best results came from “Make compatible with Acrobat 7 and later”).
I had a large PDF, with a size of 5,680, 561 bytes. This method of compression gave me a file of 3,747,156 bytes, or a loss of 1,933,405 bytes (1,888 KB).
Method 2: Open PDF in Preview; use Save As plus Reduce File Size
- Open your PDF in Preview (on a Mac).
- From the menu bar, choose File, then Save As.
- In the dialog box for Save As, choose Reduce File Size in the Quartz Filter option.
While this is simpler than method one, it can compromise image quality in the document. With this method, my 5,680, 561 byte file was reduced to 5,171,274 bytes, or a loss of 509,287 bytes (498 KB).
The third method also produced a large size reduction, but not as large as the first two methods.
Method 3: Use PDF Optimizer in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
- Open your PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
- From the Menu Bar, choose Advanced, then PDF Optimizer.
- Use the default settings to optimize your document. (You can also use the button labeled “Audit Space Usage” to find out what is taking up so much space in your document, then tailor your optimizing choices to those elements).
With method 3, my large document was reduced to 5,215,961 bytes, or a loss of 464,600 bytes.
Note: all of these experiments were run on a Mac running OS 10.6.7, Adobe Acrobat Pro 9, and Preview 5.0.3. Your results will vary depending on your operating system, programs, and the contents of the PDF you are trying to shrink. Good luck!
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Shrink PDF file size
Have you ever tried to email someone a PDF file only to have it rejected by the email system because the file size is too large? After this happened to me for the umpteenth time, I asked one of our student staff members what to do. In no time flat, she’d come up with five different ways to shrink the file size of a PDF. Today, I put all five methods to the test and came up with my favorites:
Method 1: Use Document > Reduce File Size in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
I had a large PDF, with a size of 5,680, 561 bytes. This method of compression gave me a file of 3,747,156 bytes, or a loss of 1,933,405 bytes (1,888 KB).
Method 2: Open PDF in Preview; use Save As plus Reduce File Size
While this is simpler than method one, it can compromise image quality in the document. With this method, my 5,680, 561 byte file was reduced to 5,171,274 bytes, or a loss of 509,287 bytes (498 KB).
The third method also produced a large size reduction, but not as large as the first two methods.
Method 3: Use PDF Optimizer in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
With method 3, my large document was reduced to 5,215,961 bytes, or a loss of 464,600 bytes.
Note: all of these experiments were run on a Mac running OS 10.6.7, Adobe Acrobat Pro 9, and Preview 5.0.3. Your results will vary depending on your operating system, programs, and the contents of the PDF you are trying to shrink. Good luck!