PDF Compression Suggestions?

[DiscGo]

I have a customer who is looking to find a free program to compress a 12mb pdf file into a 1mb file. She basically does not want to go back through and reduce her resolution on the pictures and she wants to keep the pictures in color. And I am certainly not going to do it for her. Do any of you have any suggestions for a simple way of compressing the PDF files? I tried a couple of free programs that only reduced the size of the PDF like .4 megabytes instead of really reducing the size. Thanks.

[skianddive]

Your customer could buy this tool, which can perform embedded image compression in PDF files, for $38.00, and then they can return it under their "30 days no risk refund" claiming that it did not work for them:

http://www.verypdf.com/pdfinfoeditor/index.html#dl (http://www.verypdf.com/pdfinfoeditor/index.html#dl)

A tad unethical, but for a one-time use that will save hours of work, I think the software gods might look the other way.

[NOTE: Another reason why the idea of software rental may one day catch on.]

[RedMan]

Google is your friend, take your pick. All work similarly.

Google "Free PDF compression tool"


http://www.google.com/search?q=free+pdf+compression+tool&rls=com.microsoft:*&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF8&startIndex=&startPage=1

[DiscGo]

Yeah, I have tried several of those but mostly they seem to only trim half of a megabyte from a 12 megabyte file. That is part of why I was looking to see if any of you had any experience with this or knew of a way to do it. Thanks guys. I'll keep looking.

[Deathcricket]

I would be very interested if you get an answer on this. My knowledge on the subject is that a pdf is already extremely compressed. And being an open source product, they usually are extremely efficient already. So while running winzip would work extremely well on an antiquated word doc or jpg, pdf's already have an innate compression that renders futher compression useless.

Again I could be wrong.
:ne_nau:

Edit: Just noticed how many times I used the words "extremely" and wanted to apologize personally. If the size in an issue, perhaps break the document into a couple pieces?

[Sombeech]

If those tools don't work, the answer is in the photos.

This is a common issue with people building powerpoints full of high res photos, when the end result will show the photo in only an 800 X 600 frame because of their fancy titles, font, and bullet points.

They'll have 15 slides and wonder why their PPT is 30MB and can't be emailed.

I'd try to show your customer that the photo will probably be viewed at around 1024 X 768 anyways, so she might as well resize them within the PDF.

[Last Child]

I would be very interested if you get an answer on this. My knowledge on the subject is that a pdf is already extremely compressed. And being an open source product, they usually are extremely efficient already. So while running winzip would work extremely well on an antiquated word doc or jpg, pdf's already have an innate compression that renders futher compression useless.

Again I could be wrong.
:ne_nau:

I have to create and use pdf files regularly. I did a similar search a year or so ago. I had no luck. A 92% compression rate is major. Especially with pdf files. Good luck and if you do find something I hope you will let us know.

[Sombeech]

How is she creating the PDF in the first place? Through Adobe, or is she converting it?

I'd also check out www.cutepdf.com It's a free conversion tool, works great. I'm not sure about compression though.

[RedMan]

Most of the times it is content related.
On my mac I trimmed a 7.6MB PDF to 266K yesterday.

If it is full of images don't expect much compression.

[DiscGo]

She is using Cute PDF to create the PDFs from publisher files. I know that PDFs are already compressed but there are 3rd party tools to compress them further. I just don't want to buy one.

[Sombeech]

What's the combined size of her photos? If it's above 8 MB, it's going to be the best way to reduce the size by resizing those photos.

I'd suggest the Vista Powertoy Image Resizer again.

Most people hang on to that large filesize because they don't understand what happens when they're resized. They think massive detail will be lost.

But my guess is, she won't be zooming in on her PDF much more than 125% anyways, so how big will her photos really be?

I'd take her PDF, resize the photos to a width of 1200, and plug them back in. Tell her you used a "special" PDF compressor and found a way to get it to around 3 MB.

She won't have a clue what you did, and you'll be praised for your genius. :mrgreen: