I’m not sure if this is new in Leopard but I just discovered it. You can significantly shrink the size of PDF files using Preview.
To do this open the PDF in Preview. Select “Save As…” from the File menu. In the dialog that appears you will see a pop-up menu labelled “Quartz Filter”. Choose “Reduce File Size” and when you save the PDF it will be much smaller than the original.
There is some image quality loss so be sure to keep a copy of the original in case you aren’t happy with the results.
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January 18th, 2008 at 2:44 am
Not so sure about this one… I tried this on several large (4-8 MB) pdf files, and when I saved using the “reduce file size” option the resulting file was considerably LARGER than the original. Preview help says that this option simply compresses images within the pdf. If your document already has compressed images, then it’s of little or negative value.
January 18th, 2008 at 9:49 am
My trial file increased in size, too - from 388 KB to 584 KB. I think this particular ‘tip’ was a dud. (Sorry!)
January 19th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
It works for me, especially good for reducing the size of files created from Pages templates.
January 30th, 2008 at 10:56 am
I tried this on a 17.8 mb pdf. while it did reduce it down to 4.4mb, the quality was blurry. It was legible, but not ideal. A neat trick, but might not be ideal for photocopied-then-scanned documents.
July 8th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
This trick actually work as the poster said… don’t know what Jo and Arty did wrong… it reduced a file from 12.4 MB to 4.1 MB however the quality left a little to be desired much like Mario said… I can see how it would be useful for personal use but not for business or faxing purposes.