Measure twice, cut once: how to optimize the PDF fileĬompressing a document in Portable Document Format is a real trade-off between quality and size. Medical staff and legal authorities are required to store documents in PDF/A format to be able to reproduce the originals in the future.Īs you have probably guessed, you will not be able to keep up with the PDF/A standard if you compress industry-critical documents with lossy compression. One of them is the ability to preserve the documents in their original state and the option to roll back any changes made to the document. However, your choice of file compression type should entirely come down to specific use cases.įor instance, in heavily regulated industries like medical or legal ones, it’s imperative to comply with the document archiving standards (PDF/A). When it comes to changing PDF size, you might find yourself on the horns of a dilemma facing a choice between size or quality. PDF compression and compliance with standards However, the lossless technique is used when the original data in a document needs to keep up with the archiving standard and the important original data should remain unchanged. In most cases, the maximum size you can reach with this compression type isn't’t smaller than ½ of the original document. As you can imagine, it can’t compete with lossy compression if you need to shrink the document’s size considerably. This type makes PDFs more efficient size-wise by removing some unnecessary content, such as hyperlinks or bookmarks, and restructuring the way the data is written. Lossy compression will help you save an impressive amount of storage space, but the document’s quality will be greatly affected.Īlternatively, lossless compression reduces the file size and leaves the quality of the visuals intact. To understand how it works, let’s imagine you have a PDF, the largest part of which is composed of visuals. The keyword here is “permanently.” That is why you need to make sure there is a backup copy of your document saved if this size reduction technique removes more than you needed it to. With lossy compression, you permanently remove that data from the document that the algorithms view as non-noticeable. Generally, there are two major PDF compression types: lossless and lossy. These algorithms scan the document for areas that are not very noticeable to the human eye and can be shrunk.
Roughly speaking, when you compress a document, you launch specific algorithms to shave it of unnecessary redundancies in order to change its size. In that case, re-compressing the photos using a lossy compressor might get you space-saving at the cost of image quality.
For example, suppose you have high-quality images that take 90% of the space. Pros and Cons of the PDF formatĬompression depends on what is inside the PDF document. Before we get to the tools that make editing and compressing PDFs a bit easier, we will cover some basic information about the PDF format. With all the offline and online tools available to us, just about anyone can work with PDFs with no special skills or training. It’s become more flexible and now gives users more power in terms of editing and collaborating on documents. However, as more and more PDF readers and editors appear on the market, the format started gaining significant improvements. It’s interesting to mention that PDF was initially designed as a medium for exclusively sending and viewing information to prevent recipients from changing or modifying it.
One of the most significant advantages of PDF is that it preserves a document’s original layout, making it perfect for printing and on-screen reading. PDF format seems to be like a Jack of all trades when it comes to reading and viewing a whole range of documents, from the forms we submit to the IRS to online catalogs and e-books. It’s no wonder that we run into them virtually every day. According to the PDF Association, as of 2016 alone, there were over 2 billion PDFs on the internet, and 73 million new files in this format were saved every day in Google Drive and Mail. It was created by Adobe back in the early '90s and now is one of the most used formats in the world. PDF) is a digital file format that allows you to easily send, open, and read documents across different platforms. It will help you downsize PDF documents in seconds. If you’re having a hard time changing your PDF’s size to make it more web-friendly or to be able to save some storage space, worry not, you’re in the right place to learn how to do just that. However, when it comes to editing them, it’s like riding the hassle bus. PDFs have won our hearts as the best file format for viewing, printing, and sharing documents. What if this image is a part of a PDF file? Well, then it might be worth thousands of kilobytes as well. Getting the balance right: how to compress a PDF without sacrificing its qualityĪn image is worth a thousand words.
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