So even documents that appear to be just text can often be entirely images. However, it is common that users and organisations do not have access to the scanner settings in order to configure the scanner to produce more optimally sized PDF files. Scanners often capture document pages as high resolution images without compression. This will likely reduce the file size 50-60% without any change in resolution and the image will be indistinguishable from the original. When you have access to more computing power than a camera, it is possible to recompress images with a compression algorithm optimized for file size. It is understandable why devices such as cameras want to compress and save the images as quickly as possible, but in general means images are much larger than is necessary. Poor image compressionĪnother reason that images may be overly large is that the images are captured with devices using image compression algorithms optimized for speed. These can be safely resized to a more appropriate resolution prior to inserting into the PDF which should greatly reduce the file size. Unless you have set a very large page size for your PDF file then it is very unlikely that you need the entire resolution of the image. If these images are then inserted into a PDF file then the file size will increase by approximately the same amount as the size of the image.
Most image capturing devices now capture images at very high resolution and this means large image file sizes. Here are the four main reasons for large images appearing within PDF files. Image content is the most common reason for a PDF file to become so big. If most of your data is made up of Content Streams, or you have a PDF with a Large page size or a considerable Number of pages, read the sections below where we have identified some alternative methods to reduce the file size.
In order to compress PDFs containing mostly Large Images, Embedded Fonts or Application Data (Piece info), use either an online PDF compressor like WeCompress or an offline one like NXPowerLite Desktop. Read the sections below to help you understand each in more detail alternatively here's a short summary of how best to compress the file size for each category:
When you obtain a breakdown of the content in your PDF file you should see which area is taking up space. The file breakdown contains a lot more detail of the file contents, however, the terminology can be confusing for the average user. In the PDF Optimizer dialog click the Audit Space Usage button in the top right.Click the Settings… button below the dropdown menu.In the Save as type dropdown menu choose Adobe PDF files, Optimized (*.pdf).Go to the File menu and choose Save As.The advanced PDF editor, Adobe Acrobat Pro, has a (hard to find) tool called Audit Space Usage which does a similar job. It is designed to be simple and straight-forward and even includes useful information like Page Count and Size Per Page. (Note: it works for Microsoft Office docs too!) Just drag and drop your file onto the browser and it will upload, process your file and then show a breakdown of your PDF’s content.
WeCompress File AnalyzerĪ free option is to use WeCompress's online File Analyzer service. I only know of two ways to get this information though there may be other options.
How to see what’s taking the space in a PDF fileįirst, it is important to know that there are tools that can show you a breakdown of content within your PDF file. In this article I will reveal how to see a breakdown of a PDF file’s contents, what is bloating the file size and what can be done in each case to reduce it. It is common to find a PDF has a large file size, but it is very difficult to work out why - and then further what to do about it. In addition, there are some content types that bloat when converted to PDF format. PDF files are created by different applications and devices, not all of which are configured to produce documents that are optimized for small file sizes.