How to reduce the size of PDF

[sans558346]

I have a pdf , i want to reduce its size, any idea [Irrelevant link removed. -Mod]

Thanks in advance

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

If you have Adobe Acrobat Pro, there are two methods to reduce the size of a PDF file: File>Save As Other>Reduced Size PDF and File>Save As Other>Optimized PDF - if you only have Adobe Acrobat Standard, only the first one will be available.

The "Optimized PDF" gives you a lot more options and allows you to fine tune how you want to reduce the file size, whereas the "Reduced Size PDF" is a very simple approach without the ability to configure the process.

If you are dealign with scanned documents, there is a third way via the "Enhance Scans" function, which you can access on the right hand pane, or via the Tools view.

[James25379176y501]

Thank you for the simple direct answer

[Johnson156]

Sometimes the optimized PDF, reduce size pdf or enhance scans doesn't helps to reduce file size... Not getting good if we have large size in PDF (eg 150 mb to 10 mb this is things will not get by doing to optimized PDF or reduce size pdf)

[philippanmei]

hmmmm.... If you have 150 mb and you want it to reduce size upto 10 mb than this is an another problem.

If you have only text in PDF file than obviously you can get down to 10 mb easily if not you can try out some of this steps

1. Recreate your pdf by doing Print command (Ctrl + P and choose the printer as PDF and PDF setting up should be smallest size or normal size)

2. If the printing option is not satisfy than you can do after printing to pdf do some optimize option.

3. You can import PDF file into Indesign by using script and export to PDF or export to Interactive PDF.

There's is a lots of things to do.. try it out first that three options.

Thanks

[Dov Isaacs]

On behalf of Adobe Systems Incorporated …

We most strongly advise against what is known as “refrying PDF” - the process of printing a PDF to PostScript and distilling the results. The facts are that:

(1)     The print process generates PostScript optimized for printing on PostScript printers, not for PDF generation and can result in problems with text encoding and fonts.

(2)     This can be a very lossy process in that refrying eliminates live transparency, color management, and any accessibility tags as well as interfering with the ability to search for text within the PDF file.

(3)     It is very possible, due to transparency flattening that in fact the resultant PDF file will be larger than the original PDF file, with problems to boot!

Sorry, but Adobe does not endorse your solutions at all.

[Les whiteside]

This was agood way of reducing a PDF from 30 megs to 5 megs, but windows 10 doesnt let me dio it now since having to upgrade from windows 7 last week to windows 10...any ideas how to over come this problem...I use acrobat pro....thxs Les

[Dov Isaacs]

Exactly, what doesn't Windows 10 let you do with regards to PDF files and Adobe Acrobat that you could do with Windows 7? Acrobat certainly doesn't have less functionality under Windows 10 than it did under Windows 7!

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

The question of “reducing the size of a PDF file” comes up often in these forums.

It is exceptionally important to understand why a PDF may larger than you expect. Some possibilities:

(1)     Your original document has a very large amount of content, especially vector and raster image content.

(2)     You did various operations on a PDF file in Acrobat and instead of doing a ​save as ​you did a ​save​. ​Save as​ rewrites the entire PDF file, doing various optimizations in the process. ​The simple ​save ​operation simply appends the changed pages to the end of the existing PDF file, by definition making the file larger and potentially much larger than the original PDF file.

(3)     You used various techniques in creating your PDF file, many of which are counterproductive, that by definition yield bloated (and slow to render) PDF files. An example of such a technique is “outlining text” (often recommended by some Luddite print service providers with late 20th century workflows who perpetuate myths about fonts causing problems when printing). Another is that of flattening transparency which often converts text into outlines or raster images when there is interaction between text and objects that are not completely opaque.

(4)     You created the PDF file using parameters that did not reasonably downsample raster images to a resolution appropriate for your printing and viewing needs.

(5)     You created your PDF file with parameters that forced embedding of full fonts as opposed to the subset of the glyphs needed to render your text.

(6)     You created your PDF file with a PDF version of less than 1.5. PDF 1.5 and later allows for object stream compression. Non-image data within the PDF file (including text and vector parameters and data) are internally ZIP-compressed within the PDF file, often dramatically cutting the size of PDF files that are primarily text and vector.

What can you do to proactively avoid bloated PDF files?

Regenerate your PDF from your original documents, making sure you set the downsampling and compression parameters appropriately. Optimal compression while maintaining high quality is ​Automatic (JPEG), ​Maximum Quality​. Minimum downsampling for reasonable print output is 300 dpi for images over 450 dpi (color and grayscale) and 1200 dpi for images over 1800 dpi for bi-level (monochrome) images. Remember for screen viewing, that the old recommendations of downsampling to 72 dpi or 96 dpi are totally irrelevant where screen resolutions are now often between 200 and 300 dpi (such as on iPhones, iPads, and corresponding Android devices. If this generates a PDF file that is “too large” for your needs, your choices are either (a) downsample to a lower dpi setting, yielding PDF files that will possibly print and/or display images poorly, (b) set the compression method to a lower quality setting, also yielding PDF files that will possibly print and/or display images poorly (typically with very nasty JPEG compression artifacts), (c) a combination of (a) and (b) which is the worst of both worlds, and (d) simplify your original document to use fewer and/or smaller raster images. You should also ascertain that PDF files are created with fonts embedded as subsets! (For obvious reasons, all fonts used in your original document should be subset-embedded in the PDF file to assure that text renders properly both on screen and for print!) And finally, you should ascertain that the PDF file version is at least PDF 1.5.

You can also use the ​optimization ​features of Acrobat Pro to achieve similar results after the fact although generally you get poorer image quality downsampling and recompressing imagery that is already in the PDF file than if you regenerate the PDF file from sources with the desired target downsampling and compression settings!

What you should ​not ​do includes (a) “refrying a PDF file” - printing to PostScript and distilling, (b) not embedding fonts, (c) flattening transparency, and (d) using downsampling and compression parameters that yield fuzzy-wuzzy, artifact-ridden images.

The bottom line is that you cannot legislate the size of a PDF file! The size of such a file is primarily dependent upon the amount and type of content in your original document used for PDF creation and secondarily, upon the parameters used for PDF generation. If your original content is totally text and vector graphics, generally speaking, there is much less wiggle room for cutting PDF file size (other perhaps than converting very complex vector objects to low resolution raster images with the inherent loss of quality for both display and print.

[Lavish_Eclipse15C3]

This worked for me: https://www.adobe.com/au/acrobat/online.html

I thought it might take out the editable fields functionality but it didn't and it's looking great. I went from 3MBs to 280kb.