Reduce PDF file size

Nuance PDF Converter Enterprise on Windows

On Windows machines managed by Department Nuance PDF Convert Enterprise software can be installed using Physics self service. If you do not want to install this software on your work computer you can connect to one of the the Windows Terminal Server (how to access Windows Terminal Server) where this software is installed.

  • Start the Nuance PDF Converter and open your PDF file
  • Go to Tools -> Optimize PDF..., amend options and select OK
  • Optimization can take some time. Once finished you are asked to provide location and name of the optimized PDF file.

Ghostscript on Linux

Use the following ghostscript command:

gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=output.pdf input.pdf

If the -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen setting is too low quality to suit your needs, replace it with -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook for better quality, but slightly larger pdfs. Delete the setting altogether for the high quality default, which you can also explicitly call for with -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress.

Compress PDF, Adobe online service on Windows, Linux and MacOS

Adobe Acrobat website provides free service that can be used to compress PDF files.
Go to the Compress PDF file page, upload your PDF file, select compression option, download optimised version of the optimized PDF file.

Adobe Acrobat Pro on Windows

You would need to have access to Adobe Acrobat Pro version(free version is not enough). Adobe Acrobat Pro is installed on the Windows Terminal Server (how to access Windows Terminal Server).

  1. Start -> Adobe Acrobat Pro
  2. From File -> Open… - select PDF file that size you wish to reduce.
  3. Form File -> Save As -> Reduced Size PDF … - select the appropriate version compatibility for your requirements (selecting the latest version may further reduce file size).
  4. Click OK button and save file with new name.

It may take some time to perform this action – depending how big the original PDF file is. Please watch progress bar at the bottom of the opened document.

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