What's the difference between Reduce Size PDF and Optimized PDF?

What's the difference between Reduce Size PDF and Optimized PDF?


Erik Martinez


2 Answers

Voted Best Answer

Reduce Size PDF is one particular set of settings of the PDFOptimizer. And it is some average setting, but it may or may not really work for you.

Optimized PDF is controlled via the PDFOptimizer, where you have full control over the settings, such as image resolution reduction, font embedding, etc..

If you are not overwhelmed with the options in the PDFOptimizer, you get better results using it, than just do the Reduce Size PDF.

Hope this can help.

Max Wyss.


By Max Wyss   

As Max mentions, the Reduce Size PDF command is really just one particular setting of the PDF Optimizer that is available in Acrobat Std. and Pro. In Acrobat XI, it is located under the File > Save As Other > Reduced Size PDF menu command and can be run on multiple PDF files. It will resample and compresses images and subset-embeds fonts that were left embedded. It also compresses document structure and cleans up elements such as invalid bookmarks. If your file size is already as small as possible, the Reduced File Size command will have no effect on the size of your document. Remember to not perform this command on digitally signed documents.

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On the other hand, the PDF Optimizer (only available in the Pro. version), allows you to pick and choose what elements you can remove and modify in your PDF. This command is located under the File > Save As Other > Optimized PDF menu in Acrobat XI Pro.

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In the PDF Optimizer you can do things like downsample and compress images, unembed fonts, work with transparency, flatten form fields, and remove links and bookmarks.


Lori Kassuba   


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