You should know that the PDF format was originally developed by Adobe, the same developers who created Photoshop, among others. It was officially published as an open standard on July 1, 2008 and established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as ISO 32000-1.
Thanks to this standardization, this format can now be used by anyone because it is open source. Among other things, documents can be digitally signed without being able to be tampered with later. In addition, these documents can be encrypted to increase security.
This format is mainly required by public administrations and other organizations to present various digital documents. However, they usually set a weight limit for the document. If for some reason your PDF is heavier than allowed, here are some ways to reduce the weight.
Adobe Compressor
The first option and from our point of view the most recommended is this tool from Adobe. As we have already mentioned, they are the developers of this format and offer a very good compression tool. This tool is completely free and safe and you can access it from here.
This simple tool is designed to reduce the size of PDF files in an easy way. One of its most interesting features is that it allows us to choose the level of compression of the file. It offers a low, medium or high level, which, as you can imagine, affects the final quality of the file.
You should know that the online application has a file size limit of 2 GB. The good thing about this tool is that we don’t have to download and install anything at all. This tool can be used without any problem on Windows computers, but also for iOS, Linux, macOS and Android.
Using this tool couldn’t be easier. You can click the “Select File” button or simply drag and drop the file.
The tool tells us the weight of the file to be compressed. Below we can see the compression options and the final size that the compressed file will have. We can see that the high compression reduces the weight of the PDF file the most, while there is little difference between the low and medium compression.
We select the option we want and click Compress. The larger the file size and the higher the compression level, the longer this tool will take. It only takes a few seconds, so we won’t have to wait long. Once compressed, we can preview it and, of course, download it for free.
Other websites to compress a PDF file
We recommend Adobe, especially if the files contain personal data or relevant information, but there are other options, such as:
- iLovePDF: is a very interesting alternative that allows extreme compression with low quality but high compression, the recommended option that offers a balance between quality and compression, or low compression with high quality. You can access it from here.
- SmallPDF: an interesting alternative but much more limited than the previous ones. This option offers us a “simple” compression that reduces the file size at a standard resolution. Then there is the “Strong” option that only offers us a free compression. You have to go here to use it.
- Free PDF Converter: A very interesting option that allows file compression. It boils down to a good quality and low compression option or a high compression and reduced quality option. A custom option is added that we can only use by paying. If you want to try this tool, you can do it from here.
