PdfCompress6.3.3

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

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.

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!

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.

PDF Compress vs. PDF Shrink Lite -- Has anyone done a detailed comparison of these two products? Testing them both on a few recent PDFs I have generated, PDF Compress munged the output because it wasn't licensed, sometimes created output files that were larger than the originals (perhaps because of the honking big "demo" graphics it puts on every third page), and could not understand the output file format from PDF Shrink Lite. Contrariwise, PDF Shrink Lite created files that were never larger than the originals, were always smaller than the files generated by PDF Compress, and could compress the output of PDF Compress down even further (to about the same size as the originals directly processed by PDF Shrink Lite). It didn't munge my output, although it is only good for 15 days. As far as user interface is concerned, PDF Compress is simpler and less confusing -- drop your PDFs on it, it throws up a little sheet with a barber pole showing you the progress, and then generates the output file (with a different file name by default, so the original isn't lost). PDF Shrink Lite shows that there is a lot more power under the hood, but is more confusing. On UI, PDF Compress wins, hands-down. For actual output, and not munging my test files, PDF Shrink Lite wins. If PDF Compress improved the amount of compression they provided, and arranged for a time-limited demo that did not munge my output files, I would rate them at least one point higher in all categories (where possible).