PdfCompress

The best Pdf Compressor I've tried: the lightest resulting files, while respecting the positions in the pdfs (some are compressing more but changing fonts or moving objects).

When I download 6.3.3, the app has a generic icon. Is that just on my system or universal.?

Good app, but for 10.6 you should stay with v.6.3.1 . Newest version are 10.7 only.

Indispensable for me.

Given the modesty of both its task and its output, this is wayyy too expensive and always has been. $4 would be more appropriate — and I’ve held that opinion far longer than I’ve been aware of the existence of PDF Squeezer, which is of like quality (though easier to use) and costs only $3.99. And if that’s the new icon above, I fail to see any improvement over the previous one, which was unmemorable at best.

Very expensive software for what it does. PDF Squeezer works great for $4 and you can preview the document prior to committing.

Extremely fast & easy to use! Output files really do shrink with and the quality is surprisingly good! Nice little powerful program

I'm a teacher and have been using my ScanSnap S1500M to convert a lot of my resource and workbooks to PDF files. Beats running to the copier. Cumulatively, my school folder does grow pretty large. I put this app to work yesterday with great results. For example, I took a 65 page book on writing with lots of graphics and obviously text, which was 37.9 MB. Ran it through PDFCompress and the result was 11.1 MB. Multiplied by the number of these PDF files I have, there will be a huge savings in disk space. Putting the original and the result side by side, the only loss in quality was a very slight amount of contrast and a tiny loss of crispness of text-very slight and acceptable for virtually any PDF I have, and would have been unnoticeable had I not compared out of curiosity. Excellent program.

I got a quick email reply but the demo license code in it did not work. Don't loose your time with people who multiply obstacles to testing their stuff.

After you have downloaded you cannot use the demo immediately. You must send an email and wait for a demo licence. It is much less convenient (and spam proof) than PDFShrink, but it seems thatPDFCompress lets one choose precisely how much the file will be compressed. A thing that PDFShrink does not.

Just to expound on TFINDLAY's wise words, with Quartz Filters, you can take total control of the compression process. In Leopard (perhaps Tiger or earlier, I'm don't recall), in your Utilities folder you'll find "ColorSync Utility". With this program, you can create you own quartz filters which allow to you compress PDFs as much as you see fit. When you start ColorSync Utility, you'll see how Apple programmed their "Reduce File Size" quartz filter that you see in Preview. It's remarkably easy to make your own filter by modeling it off Apple's filter. Head on over to for a quick tutorial. Also, some nice guy on Apple's Discussion boards put up a bunch of premade filters you can download that do the same thing. A follow-up poster even posted AppleScript code and Automator recommendations to make compressing PDFs a snap! Check out for more on that. Happy PDF-Shrinking!

Isn't that interesting. One learns a great deal here from just reading the comments. I didn't know about the quartz filter. Tried it on a 492 k doc which reduced to 68k. Bloody amazing. Thanks macupdate and keep up the great job. rhodee

Maybe I'm missing something but Preview can reduce PDFs. Open a PDF then choose Save As... Select PDF in the popup menu and select Quartz Filter: Reduce File Size.

I know another great application for creating small PDFs, suitable for sending via email and the web... It's called DropStuff, it's included in Stuffit Standard, and it's FREE Use the SitX compression with blockmode, optimizers and Compression Via Analysis on, and you'll get nice compact files.

pdfCompress is a decent app, but I much prefer PDFshrink -- great preset system. http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/9206

I find this an indispensible tool for shrinking files to send to clients via e-mail. It is easy to change and optimize settings (if required) for each document. Today, I took a 24 page, 30MB PDF file with text and hi-res pictures, and shrank it to less than 2MB. The smaller file still was good enough to print (including photo insert pics) with decent quality. Never had any problems with stability.

Application crashes when i print thru PDF Services. Output is corrupt many times. pdfshrink is a better product imho.

A nice program, but watch out choosing the options from the print menu. This has consistently crashed every program I've run this under with OS 10.2.3.

Provides functions not avaliable in the "Save As" command prior to Adobe Viewer 6.0.

WOW - had a 24 page 12Mb PowerPoint preso, with lots of 200 dpi photos. Saved as regular PDF to share - came up to 32Mb. Bit big for e-mailing! So, with judicious settings, was able to PDF Compress to 1.2Mb, at printable quality!!! Very stable, easy to use, responsive developer.