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PDF permission. How to compress a PDF file (working methods). Image Resolution Configuration

Many PC users face the problem of not knowing how to reduce the size of a PDF document so that it becomes more compact. This article will clear up any doubts you might have about choosing a desktop converter program or an online service to compress a PDF file.

PDF (from Portable Document Format) is a format created by Adobe Systems using the capabilities of the PostScript language. It is platform independent and is designed to present printed products, documentation and presentations in electronic form.

PDF documents are suitable for exchanging information between users around the world.

Advantages of the PDF format:

  • cross-platform - the document can be seen as it was created, regardless of the platform;
  • compact, supports many information compression algorithms;
  • machine independence (it can be printed on a printer and printing unit);
  • multimedia (supports videos and audio tracks, hypertext elements, as well as page previews);
  • safety. File creators can set security options, including the ability to lock (open, edit, or print after entering a password).

You can open a PDF document using the free version of Adobe Reader or a plugin available in most browsers. Google Chrome supports this format even without installing the plugin. Editing a PDF file is possible in the paid version of Adobe Reader. Many programs have also been developed for this format and converting documents from it.

PDF files can include photographs, text information, forms, etc. The appearance of the displayed document does not depend on the type of platform: in Windows and Mac OS it will look the same both on the screen and when printed.

Why do you need to compress PDF files?

The size of a PDF file often reaches tens of megabytes due to the volume and abundance of graphic elements. This can cause difficulties when sending files by e-mail or when placing them in cloud storage.

Let's consider free tools for compressing a PDF file and reducing its size: online services, as well as applications for Windows.

Are you looking for a way to compress a PDF document? From our article you will learn how to reduce the size of a PDF file and choose the appropriate option.

Using converters

CutePDF will allow you to convert a printable file into PDF and reduce it to the required size.

Install CutePDF by downloading it for free from the official website. First, the document should be opened in a program that supports the PDF format, with the ability to print. It is better to do this in Adobe Reader or Microsoft Word. Click on "File" and then "Print".

When opening the window with settings for printing, select CutePDF Writer from the list of printers.

Hover your mouse over “Printer Properties”, in the window go to “Advanced” and make a choice in what quality its contents will be displayed. To compress a file, set a quality level lower than the original document. Click on "Print" and then save to PDF.

Adobe Reader Pro DC

First, open the document in Adobe Acrobat DC, click on “File” in the menu, “Save as another” and then on “File in reduced size PDF format”.

Then you need to select programs from the drop-down list with which the document is required to be compatible. If you choose the latest version, you will be able to compress the file as much as possible, but there is a risk that the recipient will not be able to open it in older versions of the program.

After clicking "OK", wait for the compression procedure to complete, and then you can save the file to the desired location.

The same method is advisable to use if the file is located on Google Drive and you need to download it, having first reduced the size.

Go to Google Drive, double-click on the PDF file you want to compress, and then on the printer symbol to open the print screen.

In the new window that will open in front of you, select Adobe PDF from the drop-down list. By clicking on the “Properties” button, you will see a new window in which you should go to the “Paper and Print Quality” tab, and then to the “Advanced” button at the bottom of the window.

Select the file quality in the drop-down list, click “OK” at the bottom of the window, then “OK” in 2 more windows. Save the document on your computer.

Microsoft Word

How to reduce pdf file size using Word and Acrobat?

This method consists of converting a file from format 1 to format 2, and then converting it back.

First, you should open the PDF file in Adobe Acrobat, in the “File” menu, click on “Save As”, “Select another folder”, specify the file type “*.docx” and the location where it will be located on the PC. After clicking the “Save” button, open the document in Word, select “File” and “Save as Adobe PDF”.

PDF Compressor

Using PDF Compressor, you can reduce a PDF file for publication on a website, social network and sending by e-mail. This service will not reduce document density (DPI); clarity is maintained when scaling and printing.

By clicking on the “Download” button, you can select up to 2 dozen files. You can drag them to the download area and wait for the processes to complete. Download compressed documents by clicking on their icons, or all files as a ZIP archive.

Archiving

To make the file take up less space on your PC, you can archive it using one of the popular programs: WinRAR or 7Zip.

To compress a document using 7Zip, hover the right mouse button over the file and the left mouse button over the 7Zip line, select “Add to “file_name””, and the archive will appear on the screen. Before compression begins, you can specify some characteristics by selecting “Add to archive.”

Using an archiver, you can compress a file or create an archive of several documents, which will make it easier to send them by e-mail. Before sending the archive to the recipient, you need to check whether he has this archiver installed.

Online converters

Smallpdf online service

This service is simple in functionality, but has additional features: importing a document from Dropbox or Google Drive, and then saving it to cloud storage after completing the online compression procedure.

This service is pre-configured to compress the file up to 144 dpi, so different compression rates are possible. For example, a file whose size is 6 Megabytes can be compressed by 2 times, and the quality will not decrease.

But it happens that a file whose size is 100 megabytes will be compressed to 88 megabytes due to the use of elementary file size reduction algorithms.

iLovePDF

In iLovePDF, you can upload a document from your own PC, as well as from the cloud service Dropbox or Google Drive, and then select the compression level. The higher the compression ratio used, the worse the quality of the output file. A 100 MB file with maximum compression is compressed to 50 MB.

PDF files are quickly compressed for free, without restrictions on the use of the service, with automatic removal from the service within an hour. The limitation of the service is to download 1 file at a time.

Free PDF Compressor

This program is not regularly updated, but it works perfectly on Windows 10, Windows XP, etc. If online tools are not available, Free PDF Compressor can be useful.

Free PDF Compressor will give you the opportunity to choose 1 of 5 presets for compressing a PDF file. Specify the parameters, the path to the saved file and select “Compress”.

PDF optimization

You can open the document in Adobe Acrobat. By clicking on “File” in the menu, click on “Save as Other”, and then on “Optimized PDF File”.

In the PDF Optimization window, click on Estimate Space Usage. After its implementation, you will understand what and by how much percent you can compress. Then you should close the window by clicking “OK” and select compression characteristics. Using the left mouse button, click on the selected compression level, and on the right, change the characteristics to achieve the required level of quality.

You can delete photos, convert them to black and white, compress them, change resolution, change fonts, etc., and then save the document to the desired folder.

Please note that many conversion and compression programs can be downloaded for free on official websites.

Choose a program or online service based on your needs for the quality and degree of document compression.

When choosing the version of the format in which you save the file, make allowances for the fact that the recipient may not have the latest version of the program and, therefore, will not be able to access the document you sent.

Conclusion

On many modern PCs, hard drives are several terabytes in size. However, every megabyte is valuable if you need to quickly transfer a file by email or post it on the Internet. We hope that you found all the information you needed about compressing a PDF file, and you were able to use our recommendations.

If you need to send a PDF to yourself or someone else, but it's too large to attach to an email, you can reduce the file size for free using our online PDF compression tool without sacrificing file quality. You won't find anywhere else online tools to convert and compress PDF files like ours, completely free of charge. With ease of use, fast PDF compression, and a variety of useful tools to make working with PDF files easy, our software is a superior solution.

Permanently deleting a file

After using our free PDF resizer tool, all remaining data will be permanently deleted from our servers, including backups; this will provide sufficient time for files to be downloaded before they become unavailable on our servers.

Encrypted files

We encrypt all PDF documents and other files transferred to our servers using 256-bit encryption technology. We understand the importance of privacy and security, which is why we protect your PDF and other file types using secure encryption technology. Even the most powerful computers, such as Summit or Sierra, will have a hard time cracking this code.

Convenient access anywhere

As long as you are connected to the Internet, you can use our PDF conversion tools or compress PDF online for free. Plus, because our PDF size converter and other tools are universal, you can download, convert, or compress PDF files, transferring them from any device or operating system you use, anywhere in the world.

Try our PDF compression tool for free

You can use our PDF reducer and other tools for free, or subscribe if you use our programs frequently. By subscribing, you'll immediately have access to a PDF compression tool and can even download as many files as you want at one time.

Lots of PDF tools

Whatever you need to do with your PDF, we have the right tool for you. We can offer you almost any change: from merging and splitting to rotating and converting. With a variety of PDF conversion tools, we offer a turnkey solution for all PDF editing needs.

Why compress a PDF file at all? I understand, pictures, videos that weigh tens, if not hundreds of megabytes, the same music. They need to be squeezed. In fact, files also need to be compressed, because in some cases they can be more than a couple of kilobytes. This often applies to books and large articles with pictures.

You can quickly compress a PDF document for sending by mail, where the downloaded file size is set to a fixed size. When uploading to your website or other resource where you want to save space. There are many options for why this should be done, so in the article I will reveal all the known methods.

In the article about PDF definition, I wrote about its advantages. The format can be opened on any computer and operating system and the appearance of the document will not change. The only drawback is the size.

How to compress PDF online using services

Compressing a PDF document via the Internet is the most popular and convenient way. There are many services to carry out the process, which I will describe in this article. Here we go?

pdfcompressor.com

The resource may not be the best, but working with it is easy and convenient. To load a document into the resource window, just move it there, or click the “ Download" and select a file on disk. Suppose I take a book on computer architecture that is 19 MB in size. Now I’ll upload it to the site and see how efficiently it compresses the document.

As a result, the book was compressed by 49%, almost twice, which means its size is now 9.7 MB.

Compressing PDF format is not the only thing that can be done on the resource. It also does image conversion and ODT type to PDF format, PDF to DOC conversion and vice versa, same with HTML, PUB, ePub. The disadvantage of the service is that it is slow to upload a large file to the server, so you need to be patient and wait if you decide to compress the file to 100 MB.

ilovepdf.com

The next PDF compression option is the ilovepdf.com service. Also popular, but that’s not important to us, is it? You, as a user, are interested in the effectiveness of this service. We'll check it now.


Having visited the resource, you have two methods of uploading a file to the server - click the button " Select PDF file"or drag it there. I choose the same book about computer architecture weighing 19 MB. 3 compression options immediately appear in the window - low compression, recommended and extreme. Depending on the type you choose, the quality of the document will either not be affected or will suffer more. Let's try extreme compression.


We are waiting for the PDF file to download and the compression process to begin. According to my observations, loading occurs at a low level. Approximately 60-70 Kb/s, my Internet is not shit, which means this is a limitation of the service itself.

As a result, the document was compressed by 50%, as in the previous case, and its size was 9.4 MB. We can conclude that ilovepdf.com and pdfcompressor.com cope with their task almost equally. It's up to you to choose which one is more convenient. By the way, the components of the document were not damaged, that is, images and text.

In addition to the ability to perform the process that we are currently implementing, the resource can do the following useful things:

  • Merge and split PDF files;
  • Compress PDF;
  • Convert PDF to Word, PowerPoint, Excel, JPG and vice versa;
  • Insert watermarks into the file;
  • Remove security passwords;
  • Flip the document at any angle;
  • Uploading files from the Dropbox and Google Drive cloud.

Please note that an unregistered user can upload a file up to 160 MB; after registration, you can upload files up to 200 MB.

smallpdf.com

Almost no different from previous services, but who knows, maybe smallpdf.com can compress pdf better? This is what we will find out now.

I upload the book document in PDF format to the resource and wait for the process to complete. The result was almost identical to the previous ones - 9.6 MB.


Now the compressed file can be downloaded to your computer or saved to . By the way, the functionality of the service has the same capabilities as all other sites.

jinapdf.com

Right now, without further ado, I am uploading the book file to the jinapdf.com server. I hope that this compressor will be better than other options.

The result was much worse than the others: with 19 MB we were able to achieve compression of up to 17.4 MB. Therefore, I will not use this option.


Additional tools can be found on the website:

  • Convert PDF format to Word, Text, JPG and vice versa;
  • Convert image to text;
  • Merge PDF;
  • PDF extraction;
  • PDF Splitting.

In short, nothing new and all services are eerily similar to each other.

pdfio.co

You can upload a document from a cloud computer or via a link, or by drag-and-drop. After downloading, wait a little and look at the result.

So, the beautiful and pleasant interface gave us the worst result - 18.2 MB. Probably worse could be the lack of any compression.


You can compress a pdf without losing quality, to do this you need to select “Low compression”, or slightly degrade the image quality by selecting the “High compression” option.

In addition to the “unique” functions that the resource has, you may have noticed the “Online text recognition” item. The top panel contains image compression options, various converters and converters from MP4 to GIF.

pdf.io

A very simple website with a big " Select a file» with which you need to select a PDF document. There are options for downloading from the cloud or via a link.

In this case, it was possible to compress the PDF by 37%, maybe someone will have a better result, I can’t say. Rather it depends on the document.

You can download the file to your computer or upload it to Dropbox or Google Drive.

pdf2go.com

Last hope guys. I move on to the last service on this list and voice my verdict. Then I'll move on to programs.


The result is 17.48 MB.

The conclusions are obvious, only the first two services from the list provide normal tools for compressing PDF files.

How to compress a PDF file using programs

Using programs is less convenient, since you need to find a worthwhile option, download and install. Luckily, I've put together a few options that are on par with their online service brethren.

Adobe Acrobat

Well-known program for viewing PDF documents. For those who don’t know, you can use it to save a document at a reduced size. To do this, go to “File”, select “Save as Other” and click on the “Reduced PDF File” option. This feature is only available in the paid version.

The best way to view PDF is . I consider this the most convenient utility, but I did not find a compression function there.

The most effective way to compress a document of our format is to run it in the online tools that I described above, and then compress it using an archiver, for example.

Let's say I already have a compressed file. The same book in PDF format. I right-click on it to bring up the context menu and select the 7-ZIP > Add to archive option.


In the settings you set the same parameters as mine. You can play around, maybe you will achieve better results.

How to quickly compress a PDF file

There are three ways to download a file: drag and drop with the mouse, specify the path on your hard drive, or download from the cloud.

You can also convert a color document to black and white, which will reduce the size of the PDF file.

Compress PDF file online

There is no need to download or install anything - process PDF files in the browser in any place convenient for you.

PDF2Go Online Studio is a free and secure alternative to offline programs for processing PDF documents. With this tool you can downsize images and compress files.

Why compress PDF files?

When uploading files online or sending via email, one important thing to keep in mind is size. The PDF format is widely used for resumes, all kinds of documents, and even homework.

A PDF compressor allows you to download and send even those files that may seem overwhelming.

Secure file compression

When you upload files to PDF2Go, you don't have to worry about security. We guarantee confidentiality and protection from unauthorized access. All operations are performed automatically, and copyrights remain with you!

See Privacy Policy for details.

What files can be compressed?

Reducing size is only available for PDF documents. We automatically convert files to PDF format and then compress them.

With PDF2Go you can quickly compress any file, regardless of the content (be it tables, images or just text).

Documentation:

Compress PDFs on any device

You don't need a computer to compress a PDF file. Mobile studio PDF2Go is convenient and pleasant, like “coffee to go”.

Whether it's a smartphone or tablet, Windows or Mac, Firefox or Internet Explorer - PDF2Go will help out in any situation.