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You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > macOS > "Compress PDF" missing in Leopard?

"Compress PDF" missing in Leopard?
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peeb
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Nov 6, 2007, 06:00 PM
 
From the Print menu in Tiger you can create a compressed PDF - this appears to be missing in Leopard. I tried copying the workflow over from Tiger, but it still does not work in Leopard - can this possibly be true? Aaargh!
     
rickey939
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Nov 6, 2007, 08:15 PM
 
Found this from Leopards "Help "menu....

Compressing a PDF file
Large PDF files can be difficult to archive or email. Using Preview, you can compress a PDF file so it’s easier to share or store.

To compress a PDF file:

Open Preview, in your Applications folder.

Choose File > Open, select the PDF file to compress, and then click Open.

Choose File > Save As, choose Reduce File Size from the Quartz Filter pop-up menu, and choose a name and location for the new PDF file.

Click Save.

This process compresses the images in the file. The compressed images look the same as the originals when viewed onscreen, but may appear to be of lower quality when printed.
     
rickey939
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Nov 6, 2007, 08:19 PM
 
     
peeb  (op)
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Nov 9, 2007, 03:40 PM
 
Re: Compress PDF with Leopard
Posted: Nov 9, 2007 11:13 AM in response to: iManagebob
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I just got off the phone with Apple (after a 35 minute wait). The tech had to check with some others, but the bottom line is Apple simply took this functionality OUT of Leopard. They also removed the "encrypt PDF" option. Moving them over from a Tiger install does not work.
I asked why they would take out this functionality, and of course, no-one knew.
That sucks. Thank you for looking.
     
samuraki
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Dec 5, 2007, 04:43 PM
 
     
peeb  (op)
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Dec 5, 2007, 05:24 PM
 
Thank you so much!
     
Person Man
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Dec 5, 2007, 05:45 PM
 
Originally Posted by samuraki View Post
It's not Apple's fix. It is an Automator Action that was written by a third party.
     
Reddog99
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Dec 10, 2007, 04:30 AM
 
The compress PDF "feature" won't be missed by me. The few times I've used it, it actually INCREASED the file size...
     
peeb  (op)
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Dec 10, 2007, 11:51 AM
 
That is most likely because you didn't have many pictures. Compress PDF does not compress the PDF, it compresses the images in it. You can end up with a larger file if you have few pictures, or they are already pretty small.
     
wataru
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Dec 11, 2007, 04:18 AM
 
And by "compresses the images" peeb means that it reduces their resolution. It may or may not "compress" (as in, change the JPEG "quality" or PNG compression settings, etc.); I'm not sure. But if you need high-res images in your PDF for printing purposes, then you definitely don't want to use this.
     
peeb  (op)
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Dec 11, 2007, 04:23 AM
 
Quite. The only reason I use it it is to create versions of PDFs that are email-able.
     
Don Pickett
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Dec 15, 2007, 04:48 AM
 
Originally Posted by Reddog99 View Post
The compress PDF "feature" won't be missed by me. The few times I've used it, it actually INCREASED the file size...
It depends on the images. If they have transparency or masks in them, compressing them will actually make the image bigger. I used the "Reduce File Size" thing in Acrobat yesterday, and it made a 12 MB PDF into a 200 MB PDF. Adobe has never really figured out transparency.
The era of anthropomorphizing hardware is over.
     
rehoot
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Dec 16, 2007, 03:03 PM
 
PDF files are already compressed. Additional compression might increase the size or just compress the small amount of information in the header. If you want to read about the file format, you could start here:
Portable Document Format - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Don Pickett
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Dec 16, 2007, 04:08 PM
 
Originally Posted by rehoot View Post
PDF files are already compressed. Additional compression might increase the size or just compress the small amount of information in the header. If you want to read about the file format, you could start here:
Portable Document Format - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It depends. On the high end of the spectrum, where PDF-X is used to send press-ready files to printers, PDF is more of a packaging mechanism than a compression mechanism, as you want the art to be hi res. It alleviates the need to send Quark/ID files plus fonts plus art to the printer. Of course, the drawback is that should a change need to be made to the document while at the printers it can't be done, and a new file must be sent.

For shrinking that annual report down to a size which can be emailed then, yeah, PDF compresses.
The era of anthropomorphizing hardware is over.
     
wataru
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Dec 17, 2007, 07:18 AM
 
Originally Posted by rehoot View Post
PDF files are already compressed.
Yes, but that's not what we're talking about here. PDF files often already are losslessly compressed, but we're talking about reducing the file size, even if that means discarding information. We probably shouldn't be calling this "compression" (indeed, Apple avoids that term in this case), but language is a weird thing.

We're talking about removing unnecessary information and reducing image resolution in PDF files to reduce the overall filesize. Beyond simply containing large images, PDFs sometimes contain lots of unnecessary information and need to be rewritten more efficiently. I especially see this with PDFs output from Inkscape, which can be many times larger than they need to be. Simply re-saving from Preview (not even applying the "reduce file size" filter) can reduce Inkscape PDFs to a fraction of their original size.
     
   
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