PDF files quickly reach giant proportions. Fortunately, many tools can chop an oversized PDF downwards to something easier to share online. Side by side time you lot hitting a PDF file size limit, they'll bail yous out.

We've compiled the best tools to compress a PDF file and make it smaller into iv general categories.

1. Adobe Acrobat Pro

Adobe Acrobat DC Optimize PDF reduce file size menu

If you have Adobe Acrobat installed on your calculator, there'due south a tool within the application called "PDF Optimizer". This is one of the all-time and easiest means to shrink a PDF document.

To get to this, open your PDF in Acrobat, click Tools > Optimize PDF. A toolbar with a few options will appear just to a higher place the PDF.

If you click Reduce File Size, you can cull to reduce a unmarried or multiple files. Next, yous'll choose the file location and name. In one case you click Save, Acrobat will employ default settings to your file to attempt to reduce its size.

If you click Avant-garde Optimization, you'll accept more options to ensure you maintain the quality you need. To help with this, in the Advanced Optimization window, click Audit Space Usage, and you'll be able to run into how much space each kind of element is taking upward inside the file.

Using default setting, our sample file shrunk from xi,775KB to merely 212KB, making Adobe Acrobat Pro i of the most effective PDF compressor in this list. It's a paid tool, after all, but there was ane free tool that performed meliorate with default settings. Adobe Acrobat Pro DC volition set you back $14.99 per month, but yous can get a seven-day complimentary trial.

NeeviaPDF

DocuPub Neevia PDF settings options

If you want more than control over the quality of your compressed PDF, attempt DocuPub's NeeviaPDF (for files less than 24 MB in size).

To go along things simple, you can choose i of the presets, which range from depression compression (for a higher prototype quality) to maximum compression (for a lower prototype quality). You're also given the option to discard certain elements from within your PDF. This includes things like forms, annotations, and page labels, which can unnecessarily increase the size of the file.

Our sample PDF lost 98% of its size, clocking in at merely 203KB, down from xi,775KB. This was the smallest we achieved in our tests, and the result looked just fine. How much of the original PDF you want to discard depends on how much space you lot actually need to relieve.

Windows 10 finally includes an option to print-to-PDF. Still, advanced features, like tweaking the quality and size of a document, are not function of this feature. Meanwhile, many PDF printers let you choose quality and compression settings, which can greatly influence the size of your PDF files.

Annotation that the tools highlighted below require GhostScript to view and handle PDFs.

FreePDF

FreePDF is a classic PDF printer, and we highlight it here because it allows y'all to create your own compression profiles. Once installed (call up that you need GhostScript), yous'll find it listed equally office of your Windows printers.

To reduce the size of a PDF certificate with FreePDF, open it, press Ctrl + P to launch the impress dialog, choose FreePDF as your printer, click OK, and wait for the FreePDF dialog to popular upwardly. Hither, you tin can choose from three preset PDF profiles, including eBook, Loftier Quality, and Medium Quality.

freepdf-pdf-profiles

To create a custom PDF contour, click Edit Configuration in the top correct, choose Profiles, click New, and customize the options available in the Profile editor window. You lot can change the general quality of your PDF, adapt the default resolution for pictures inside a PDF, or add a watermark to your PDFs.

freepdf-profile-editor

The default medium quality profile compressed a scanned PDF document of x MB to a 1.7 MB PDF file with an acceptable loss in quality.

4Dots Complimentary PDF Compress

4dots Free PDF Compress main window

This freeware application enables you to compress single or multiple PDFs in ane fell swoop. You're also able to compress unabridged folders of PDFs with but a few clicks of the mouse, fifty-fifty if the PDFs are countersign protected.

Once you've selected which files you desire to compress (drag and drop is supported), select the location where you want the smaller files to be saved. Y'all tin can overwrite the old file or save a copy. Hit Compress and the tool will do all the work for y'all. Our five sample PDFs took a few minutes to compress and came out 11.5MB or 29.v% smaller.

Free PDF Compressor

Free PDF Compressor file selection screen

This completely costless slice of software is also extremely simple to apply. Select the file you want to shrink, hitting Compress, then salve the smaller file.

In improver, you can choose from five levels of compression, depending on how you want to apply the file:

  • Low resolution (72 dpi), platonic for screen-view merely
  • Medium resolution (150 dpi), ideal for an ebook
  • High resolution (300 dpi), ideal for printing
  • Prepress (300 dpi), platonic for prepress, including color preserving
  • Default, ideal for a wide multifariousness of uses

Our single sample file was done in less than a minute and, due to choosing the maximum pinch level, came out at only 276KB, down from eleven,775KB. The final epitome quality was perfectly fine.

IrfanView

IrfanView is a lightweight and feature-rich image viewer for Windows. It comes with a range of plugins that turn it into a versatile prototype editing tool, for example, to catechumen images to different file types, add together watermarks to your photos, and batch process images. It also has PDF press qualities, though not in the classic sense.

Earlier you can view PDF files with IrfanView, you need to install GhostScript. Then, when you lot attempt to Save your oversized PDF equally a new and smaller PDF file, y'all'll run across a PDF Settings window next to your Save PDF As... dialog. Under General, you might have to set the Preview of PDF during salvage operation to not needed, then yous can select settings immediately. Then you lot can adjust compression settings equally seen beneath.

IrfanView PDF Save Options

In my exam, I chose medium quality for all image types and could reduce the size of a ten MB scanned PDF document to less than ane MB. The result was visibly blurred, but perfectly legible.

PDF Filter

compress-pdf-mac

If y'all routinely update your Mac'due south operating system, yous should be able to shrink your PDF without installing any new apps. This is a cool feature in Os X that many people don't know virtually.

Kickoff, open your PDF in preview. Usually you can just double-click the file, merely if you have a PDF reader such as Adobe Reader installed, you lot'll want to right-click > Open up With > Preview). Then click File >Export, and in the Quartz Filter drop-downwardly box, select Reduce File Size.

This only works with big PDF files. Endeavour doing this with a very small PDF (less than a few MB), and these could really increment in size.

PDF Squeezer

pdfsqueezer

Other than the simple process in a higher place, in that location really isn't much choice for reputable, complimentary PDF compression tools for Mac users. If you want to control the output quality, etc. of your compressed PDFs, your best bet is to download an app such as PDF Squeezer ($5.99).

This is a relatively depression-cost app that enables you to choose from diverse predefined compression settings, or to choose your own. You can also batch process multiple files at once (including encrypted files).

How Practice Y'all Brand a PDF Smaller?

This is merely the get-go of what you tin can practise with your PDFs. From reading the text inside images and scanning files for malware to converting PDFs to other formats and unlocking countersign-protected PDFs, you tin can detect the perfect PDF tool to help you.

Whether you lot're dealing with interactive PDFs or large ebooks, PDFs can stop up being surprisingly large. Each of the tools above should help with shrinking those files to a much more than manageable size.

Need to edit your PDFs, but don't want to install software? Try these online PDF editors and note tools.