Making PDFs smaller

[kingdingeling]

As an old-timer on this forum, I should know this kind of stuff, but being a software noob, I don't!

 

Anyways, I'm currently applying to a jobs online and the muppets at BMW and Porsche Consulting only allow me to upload a maximum of 4MB worth of PDFs. Now I have done a few things with my life since school, so I have a few letters and certificates that I want to upload for them to have a look at, however together they come to somewhere around 6MBs. I have tried to fiddle with PDFCreator to make them smaller, but the quality is suffering tenfold for each minimal decrease in size.

 

I was wondering of you guys know some nifty little program that could make PDFs smaller without damaging quality too much, or a program that can put two pages onto one page of a PDF? Like printing 2 pages on one, but for PDFs?

 

Thanks a lot!

[ClayMeow]

I put together a 93-page document last semester, which included images, and it was only 2MB. I have PDFs of textbooks that are less than 4MB. What the hell are you putting together?!?!

 

I use Acrobat X Pro. You can download a 30-day trial of one of the CS suites if you want to give it a shot and see if that has better compression.

[kingdingeling]

Ok I'll try that tomorrow, it's a bit late tonight for me to be fiddling effectively with that stuff... I mainly have scanned documents, meaning they're essentially pictures and therefore huge. My mum doesn't know how to properly work our scanner, therefore she's scanned the lot as images and I am not anywhere close to home to be doing it myself, as I am in Santiago de Chile right now...

[ClayMeow]

Ok I'll try that tomorrow, it's a bit late tonight for me to be fiddling effectively with that stuff... I mainly have scanned documents, meaning they're essentially pictures and therefore huge. My mum doesn't know how to properly work our scanner, therefore she's scanned the lot as images and I am not anywhere close to home to be doing it myself, as I am in Santiago de Chile right now...

 

Ah, gotcha. Most scanners can scan directly to PDF, but guess that doesn't help you now.

 

My only advice would be to check what size the images are, as far as print size go and shrink them down to your typical 8.5x11 and see if that helps. If you're using high-res images, which your scanner is probably producing, it's probably creating PDF pages at double that size.

[Waco]

If you still have the source images just open them up in Photoshop or something similar. Convert to grayscale (or black and white if you don't need gradients) and remove the background if there is one. Trim the edges and downsize the resolution until they're legible but not print-quality (since you don't need that).

 

That should save you a huge amount (especially if you remove the background on grayscale images...just fill it with white). The compression ratio will skyrocket even if all you do is remove the backgrounds of the scanned pages.

 

 

EDIT: If you aren't in a rush and you aren't too terrified of someone seeing whatever you're trying to include I wouldn't mind doing said edits if you send me a PM with the pictures in question.