Reduce PDF file size : free Acrobat replacement for Leopard

Hey Jerome

I have tried to install your qfilters to my Library in 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and it doesn't work. My boss has 10.6 on her home office computer and swears by your filters. I have tried add new folders to my Library folder but nothing seems to be working. Two folders I have added are Library/Filters and Library/PDF Services. I even tried adding them inside the Application Support folder and nothing.

Any help would be much obliged.

Hi,

It is working and without any problem. Unzip the filters after downloading and the already sreates a directory named filters. Move this directory to your HD/Library and that is it. It should work.

Best regards,

Stefan

This is what my Library looks like:

This is what I got after installing the filters.

Do I need to restart the computer?

Not correct. I see, you installed in User (your name)/Library/Filters - NO HERE!

Install the filters ONLY in Macintosh HD/Libray/Filters and it should work . I am working with Mountain Lion and no problem.

perfect! Thank you!!!

My pleasure!

😉

Jerome,

Thanks a lot. For the second time (I think) your solution was a big help for me.

Javier

Thanks for the filters. They work great! I'm just using the 'standard' choice, and the results are as good or better than the Acrobat Pro 'Reduce file size' function. That's the main thing I've been using Acrobat for. (I hate giving money to Adobe!)

Cheers :-)

I'm glad I found this thread. Also thanks Jerome for the link to the filters - those are awesome.

I am replying to add a little discovery from troubleshooting missing custom filters in the save-as dialog in PDFpen. Their support suggested to check /System/Library/Filters. Earlier I had looked in /Library/Filters and the folder was just missing.The one in System was where the default filters had gone.

By then I had re-created that folder and dropped in the custom filters. That fixed my problem. I suppose they could also go in the /System/Library/Filters folder instead, but I am lazy and done making changes for now.

FWIW, I am running OSX 10.7.5 on a MacPro and a Macbook Air and they both had the same problem and got the same successful fix.

I'm guessing an OSX update scripted a move of the old /Library/Filters to the new /System/Library/Filters, and only moved the default filters and lost the custom ones.

Hello, all.

New 2012 MBP, 10.8.2.

I have added Filters to the following locations to no avail:

/Library/

/System/Library/

/Library/PDF Services/

Nothing but defaults show up in the Quartz Filter dropdown box when I attempt to export.

I'm running a cobbled "fusion drive," in that once I got the laptop, an Apple-cert tech took out the optical drive and replaced with with an SSD, which is where all my applications are loaded and where they boot from.

The /Library/ folder appears on this drive and not the regular spinning hard drive...should this have any effect? It's the only anolomy I can think of.

Thanks; I have a 150-page color PDF document I'd like to have printed and bound, but it's over 700MB, which is more than a mite ridiculous. (How does a 20MB Pages document balloon into a 344MB PDF?) This is text and photos which don't have to be gorgeous, but the default "Reduce File Size" option looks like you're peering through cloudy, scratched Plexiglass. Yiiich.)

Worked!!!!

The phrase "Macintosh HD" did it; as referenced before, I have two drives. I was confusing one for the other since 10 doesn't put your HD on your desktop anymore. (You can change this in Finder Preferences: http://macs.about.com/od/faq1/f/Drive-Icons-Missing-From-Your-Macs-Desktop.htm )

Once I put the Filters folder into the /Library on the SSD drive where the applications are kept, it worked great. (I WAS placing them in the /Library folder where the data resides, a whole different drive.)

Hope this helps someone else.

Thanks, Jerome! The smaller files look a million times better than the default; like a PDF should look!

Let me add my own experience here. These filters are great, and they work well ... sometimes. But I have regular pdf files (not scanned images of text, but real text) that none of the standard built-in quartz filters reduce in size. In fact, some of these filters make the files larger! I have seen a number of files for which NONE of the built-in filters does any size reduction at all. So these filters are by no means a reliable way to reduce file size. Cross your fingers.

Several people here have noted this. It's for real. But I haven't heard any explanation.

I'm using an iMac with 10.6.8, but I have another machine using Lion that I believe does the same thing to these files.

So why is this happening? Workarounds?

You can't really reduce the size of text... as it is not a raster image... There are things you can do to reduce the file size, but that all depends on what application was used to make the PDFs. For example, if you save a PDF from Adobe Illustrator, there is an option to make your PDF editable in Illustrator. If you have this option selected, then your file will be MUCH larger.... Also, in Illustrator you can outline text - BUT this will make your file even larger...

I'm assuming though that you are not using Illustrator. Rather Word or Pages?

Do your PDFs contain images? What are the pixel dimensions of the original image used? If the images were already small to begin with and you are suing the 150 dpi setting then you may actually be increasing the resolution...

You could try Adobe Acrobat Pro. You can download the free trial and see if it works....

Thanks. I should have been more careful in what I said. I have lots of presentations, created in Powerpoint, and exported to pdf. These have lots of text, but also lots of images that take up a significant piece of a page. Many of those pdf files do not benefit, size-wise, from this Preview quartz filter strategy. Not sure what the original pixel dimensions of these images were, so yes, that might just be the reason, I guess, in that if they were already 150 dpi, and properly sized, using a 150 dpi filter wouldn't help. If they had a lower resolution, a 150 dpi filter setting might actually make the files larger, which I sometimes see happen.

Of course, once they are in pdf, I can't tell what the resolution settings were that they had when they were placed. Can I?