Comments on: Better PDF File Size Reduction in OS X

By: Maurice

Maurice — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:04:45 +0000

Hey thanks, works really well.

I even applied it twice on each reduced version to get a 10% reduction in file size from the original with a readable image.

I tried a shareware app that does the same thing and it took about 4 -5 minutes while direct from preview took under 1 min.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 01:37:52 +0000

Thanks so much! I had a 4MB paper to turn in for class (with lots of detailed images) but it had to be less than 2MB when submitted. I created my own filter (just as you described) and it worked perfectly. My 4MB file was compressed to just 525KB and the images were still very clear.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 09:32:21 +0000

Didn’t work for me. Actually increased file size of a PDF’ed Powerpoint by another 3Mb.

By: William

William — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 11:42:59 +0000

Soooo helpful ! On my Macbook air I decided NOT to install the CS Suite and rely only on iWork and native apps. That left me with HUGE pdfs generated from Keynote and Pages when images were imbedded. This solution is brillant. Thanks.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:27:24 +0000

Thank you, Internet Citizen. I’ve been having a lot of trouble with Prezi PDFs having huge sizes and the regular file size filter was destroying my images.

By: Sentry

Sentry — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 21:36:35 +0000

Awesome help for reducing PDF magazine sizes to fit on iPad, thanks very much!!!!

By: Todd

Todd — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 01:20:14 +0000

Excellent! Worked amazingly well. The original reduce size filter destroyed scanned documents I was trying to send. I adjusted the filters as you described and I swear, the docs look better and are less than half the original size. Nice! Thanks for passing this on!

By: Pico

Pico — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 17:28:45 +0000

Great tip: Works perfectly!

If you do cannot find a Filters folder in your Library folder, just go to (Your Computer) -> Users -> (Your User Name) -> Library, create a new folder and name it Filters, and then copy “Reduce File Size (75%).qfilter” into your new folder.

This worked successfully for me in OSX 10.5.8.

Thanks!

By: an

an — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 02:33:49 +0000

Thank you!!!!! I tried everything else, all terrible quality for the text PDF. Great advice– setting parameters for the image *and* changing the compression settings.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 09:31:13 +0000

Awesome, I was googling around and trying a number of things but this is perfect, especially for scanned txt as the default filter turns it to garbage!

By: Geoff Green

Geoff Green — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:22:46 +0000

Eric, thanks for the fabulous tip. It works great. I have a quick question for you — I recreated it per your instructions, but how do you export the .qfilter file for a new filter? I haven’t been able to figure that out at all.

By: Eric Meyer

Eric Meyer — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 21:01:28 +0000

John, it turns out there's a known problem in Lion—here's an Apple forum discussion with advice on workarounds. I'll update the post to reflect this. Thanks for the heads-up!

By: John McDonald

John McDonald — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 17:50:33 +0000

Love it, worked well in Snow Leopard. But couldn’t get it working in Lion. Please advise.

By: Wallace Weeks

Wallace Weeks — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:21:09 +0000

Awesome advice! Thank you so much for sharing. The built in filter turned my 960MB PDF with great image quality into 770KB with crap for images and a poor reflection on a professional photog. Now I have a 2.8MB PDF that still has good images.

By: Guillermo Velasquez

Guillermo Velasquez — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 02:14:43 +0000

Dude…

I love you…

You made my scholarship application possible, ShrinkIt, PDF Shrink and all those worthless tools didn’t make the trick…

Thanks!