Reducing size of pdf in OSX Lion

After explaining my mother this problem several times, I and two friends decided to just built a simple web tool that solves this problem.

Please just have a look! It will make your life much easier: http://smallpdf.com/

With my migration to my new mac and Mountain Lion, I didn't have the filters and was about to upload, but 30 mb here is at least an hour, so I downloaded the filters again and they work fine in Mountain Lion. Just decompress the zip file and drag whole Filters folder to your library, or open your Filters folder in your library and drag in the filters in the folder you downloaded.

Here is the link

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/41548940/PDF%20compression%20filters%20%28Unzip%20and%20 put%20in%20your%20Library%20folder%29.zip

It is explained in this blog

http://www.scooter-it.com/?p=1406

I struggled with the size of my scanned file. Using quartz filter made it fuzzy. Finally the app which did the trick was 'PDF Squeezer'. A 9.3MB file was reduced to 412KB without much loss of quality. Brilliant.

Awesome ...my file size reduced from 8.8 MB to 37 KB...super tip !!

This worked better than the Acrobat 'reduce file size option'

I was looking for an option to reduce my pdf file sizes without losing too much from the quality as I didn't want the photos to change so much.

I found automator reduced the quality of the writing and photos quite dramatically (although I love automator).

I actually found that Preview did the job better than any app..as follows:

Open pdf in preview

File..Duplicate

File..Save

Screen pops up with options and choose the reduce file size from drop down box

Save as new name

Reduced from 18.9mb to 3mb with hardly any noticeable changes to the quality of the document.

Excellent.

Thank for the tip! It work well reducing my 23 MB pdf to a 2 MB pdf

This worked for me: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57585353-263/how-to-create-custom-pdf-compr ession-filters-in-os-x/

This is the best native to OS X option I have seen. As well, if you have the where-with-all to build your own filters, you can very much customeize your output!

Great!

r/w

Mathishk- that is a great tool, thank you! You are awesome!!

Thankssss!!!!! This worked perfect for me!

smallpdf.com worked perfectly for me. Reduced a 43.8mb file to 2.2mb without losing quality in the photos. Thanks!

I have found an alternative. Applying the quartz filters blurred text documents for me so I made some screenshots.

1. Open your file you need to compress in preview.

2. Take a screenshot of each individual page. (command, shift, 4)

3. Open all your new screenshots into one Preview window and save as one document.

Screenhshot file size is always much smaller than the file size of scanned documents, without loss of clarity. I have just chopped a 30 page document from 39Mb down to 4.5Mb with the screenshot format set to JPEG and the resultant export to PDF. Time consuming I know but the ends justify the means. If anyone has the Cocktail app from maintain.se there is a handy dropdown box under the general tab of interface which allows you to change screenshot format instantly without the need to log out and back in.

🙂

Why would you bother? Seriously! Just download the app above and do it a simpler and far quicker way, dude.

Pete

I created my pdf from scribus, 31 pages, 41mb Tried the Preview/Duplicate/Save, and ended up with a pdf of 60mb. I'll try PDF Squeezer next.