The PDF format created by Adobe has become the undisputed king among formats for creating digital documents. Initially popular among graphic designers and developers, after the release of the license it gained enormous popularity. However, it can grow to gargantuan sizes.
The reason that PDFs can be large is their origin, which allows the elements embedded in the document to be saved in the quality required by printing houses. If we receive printer files or files created by a person who cannot assess which profile is intended for digital distribution, it may turn out that most of its weight is unnecessary. What can we do then?
Compressing a PDF file is a good practice of reducing its size. With an application such as Adobe Acrobat pro, which is mostly used by professional users, and buying them just for such a task is like shooting a mosquito or even a bacteria with a cannon. Fortunately, there are more suitable tools that will allow us to handle this.
How to reduce PDF file size on Mac?
Online PDF compressors will work on a Mac, but Apple users have its native option. Since the PDF format is the basis of the entire graphical interface, its editing is possible in the Preview application.
However, you must remember that sometimes it may not give the expected results though.
How to reduce the size of a PDF file on a computer running Windows 10/11?
With a dedicated PDF compressor tool such as SwifDoo PDF, you can easily compress PDF files. Select the PDF files you want to compress and reduce the size of this PDF compression tool in a single place.
Its PDF compression tool allows you to easily compress PDF files and reduce its size as per your requirement. Just select the PDF file you want to reduce the size of PDF files and follow the tips below.
How to compress PDF with SwifDoo PDF?
- Launch the program and select “Compress PDF” from the main interface.
- Preview all selected PDF files in PDF Compressor and set everything up.
- The PDF size can be adjusted accordingly using the compression level. Additionally, you can add or remove PDF files from the list.
- Finally, click the “Start” button from the PDF compressor portal and let the program finish the process automatically.
If the traditional PDF file compression practice does not bring satisfactory results, it is worth considering other methods of modifying it. One way may be to split the file into smaller pieces or delete some pages. You can just rely on the SwifDoo PDF program do all these tasks as well.
l Using Online Compressor Tools
To reduce the size of a PDF on a Windows computer, turn on your browser and enter the name of a website that offers PDF compressing options. Personally, I will recommend the website of the parent company of this format, Adobe.
Like any other online converter tools, it works in a very simple way – after selecting the file to be compressed, we choose one of the three compress options:
- High compression/small files
- Medium compression/medium files
- Low compression/large files
After processing, a link will appear and when clicked, the browser will download the processed PDF.
There are, of course, more such converters on the Internet. However, it should be remembered that the advanced compression options often require the creation of Pro/Premium accounts with subscription fees, and sometimes free versions have limits on file size or the number of pages in the processed document.
How to reduce PDF file size on Android or iOS smartphones?
As is the case with mobile systems, there are applications for the PDF processing. Also for PDF compression.
After entering the phrase “compress PDF” in the Google Play Store or Apple App Store browser, you will get hundreds of applications that work very similarly. Some of them are mobile versions of the online compression services.
Reducing file size when creating PDFs
It is also worth mentioning that if we are the creators of the PDF, we can take care of optimization already at the stage of creating the document.
Most applications allow you to optimize photos at some stage of creating the original document or exporting it. We can reduce the resolution of the photos used. The PDF from a Word file treated this way will be small.
What to watch out for when reducing PDF files
The last thing I would like to point out is that before each such operation, it is a good idea to take a look at your file. If some PDF text is embedded as an image, optimization may make it completely unreadable.
PDFs are still a great and basic format for sending documents, books or presentations. However, it is worth keeping an eye on their size. Remember to pay attention to the size of the PDF file when creating it – if you can.