PDF is a great file format to send read-only documents that just look stunning and beautiful with images and good graphic design. It is a common format used by professionals and non-professionals to digitize e-books and documents.
When a PDF has many high-quality images, the file size would be high. If you’re sharing it with a friend or making it available for download on your WordPress website.
It is always a good idea to experiment with multiple information provision formats like ebooks, video, audio or infographics etc.
Whatever your reason may be, we will teach you how to reduce the size of a pdf file by compressing the file using various methods and application.
What will you learn from this tutorial?
You will learn the following from this tutorial:
- How to compress a pdf file?
- How to reduce the pdf file size using online compressors?
- How to compress the pdf file using free windows compressors?
- How to compress the pdf file using python?
- How to delete a page from a pdf file?
How to compress a pdf file?
PDF files are easy to work with. They can be easily created and compressed using various free methods. Some of them are free online tools, some are third-party windows applications and few for compressing using code.
Use any one of the following methods:
- Compress a pdf file using online compressors
- Compress a pdf file using third-party applications
- Compress a pdf file using python
Click on any of above links, read about how to use each one of them.
How to reduce size of a pdf file using online compressors?
Internet had made life easier. You don’t need to download or install any application to reduce the size of a PDF file. You can use the online compressors to compress the file remotely and download it.
Since most people have an internet connection these days, I recommend you to follow this method. Since it is easy and free to implement.
Follow these simple steps to compress a pdf file using online compressors:
Step 1. Go to smallpdf.com
Smallpdf is a free collection of pdf manipulation online tools that can compress, edit, crack, and convert pdf files. There is an alternative which you can use: ilovepdf.com
Or using another alternative free online compressor: CleverPDF.com
The step to reduce PDF file size is similar to the Smallpdf, simply upload a file and download the compressed file. What’s more, CleverPDF offers a few compressing options, so you choose low, medium, or maximum compression, or even set the custom image to make the PDF smaller without affecting its quality too much.
Step 2. Choose a pdf file for compression
Either upload a pdf file from the computer or simply drag and drop the pdf file to start compression. As soon as you upload it or drop it in the drag section, the compression starts. After the compression is over, you can select to edit it, lock it with a password, convert it to jpg, and more operations can be performed.
Step 3. Click on the download button
Click on the Download File button to download the compressed pdf file. Smallpdf compressor will also tell you to what extent the pdf file is compressed.
After you download, the compression of the pdf file is successfully been accomplished.
Read more: How to Remove Password from Adobe PDF Files – Two Simple Methods
How to compress a pdf file in Windows?
The first method where we compress pdf files using online compressors can be used in all operating systems with an internet connection. If you don’t have an internet connection or don’t want to use any online tools, because you’re too cautious about a computer virus, you can use this method instead.
We will use windows applications to compress a pdf file in windows. If you can afford a premium tool, try Acrobat Pro PDF Optimizer. It is a great tool for optimizing PDF files. However, it is not cheap. If you can’t afford it or choose not to buy it, don’t worry. There are several free compressors available for free on the internet.
We recommend you use PDFcompressor for windows. IT is a free and well-made pdf compression tool.
Step 1. Download and install PDF compressor.
Download the PDF compressor software and install it. After you install the application, open it from the all programs menu.
Step 2. Add a file or a folder to select the input pdf file[s].
The second step is to add the pdf files as the input to the windows application. Or alternatively, add an entire folder to compress all the pdf files in the folder.
Step 3. Press the start button to begin the compression.
Then press the start button to begin the compression. It is as simple as that.
Pdf compressor is a free windows application that can compress pdf files very well. However, there are other options available for you as well.
Read more: How to convert Word to PDF files? (Word to Pdf Converters For Windows 7,8.0,8.1)
How to compress a pdf in Python?
Python is a popular programming language that has several applications written in it. If you are trying to code an application or an online tool, this is very useful. You can use python applications in the terminal to compress pdf files.
This is an easy to use and the most effective method here since you have more control on the output file.
Here is how you do it:
Step 1. Download pdfsizeopt from GitHub.
Step 2. Use the following command to optimize the pdf files.
~/pdfsizeopt/pdfsizeopt ~/Documents/input.pdf ~/Documents/output.pdf
Step 3. Press enter to start the compression
Things to keep in mind:
- The output and input path must include the file directories.
- The input and output files both are in the Documents folder in the commands we used.
- You can change the input and output paths to whatever you like.
- If you want to compress pdf files with images, you need to also download image optimizers.
- This is a great tool if you’re creating python or python based web applications.
- You also need to add jbig2 and pngout to your pdfsizeopt folder.
- Download them using the git clone command and change the folder names to jbig2 and pngout instead of pdfsizeopt-jbig2 and pngout-bin
How to delete pages from pdf?
Sometimes, you just want to delete a blank page or an unnecessary page from the pdf file. In order to do that, you don’t need Adobe’s premium tools. You can just use smallpdf.com online tools. They are simple to use.
Follow these simple steps to delete a page in pdf file:
Step 1. Go to smallpdf.com delete a page tool.
Step 2. Upload the pdf file you want to modify
Step 3. Delete the page by clicking on the trash bin button.
After you delete the page, it disappears from the preview. Select the page you want to delete and press the trash bin to delete the page.
Step 4. Click apply changes after you deleted the unrequired pages.
The online web application will delete the page and process the file accordingly and then take you to a different page where you can download the pdf file or make further changes like editing and compressing.
Step 5. Click Download File to download the output product.
Once they process the pdf file and make the necessary changes you wanted, the file will be ready to be downloaded. Download it unless you want to make further changes or compress it.
Another great alternative is available now. Try StarzSoft’s PDF WIZ that let you convert to and from PDF, and you can even edit the PDF. There’s no limit on file size either!
Read more: Use Docs.Zone to Convert and Merge Different Files into PDF Online
I hope you learned how to compress a pdf file easily from this tutorial. If you have any issues while using any of the above methods, please let us know in the comments below.