PDF Compression – PDF 3.0 is absolutely amazing and is the future!

There is no better lead generator than a high-quality white-paper, eBook, or catalog – but the file size of these image-rich documents can be daunting. Whether you want to speed up downloads to provide your users with the best site-experience possible, or you want to reduce your download sizes to avoid bandwidth fees and hosting limits, PDF compression can help, but there’s something better: PDF 3.0. PDF 3.0. is a software-based method to reduce the size of PDF documents while retaining much of the original document quality. With the PDF 3.0 from YUMPU Publishing, even a novice website developer or business owner can create a beautiful and interactive document that simultaneously offers high quality and low file size.

What is PDF Compression Software?

A PDF is the standard document format for publications that need to display in an identical way across multiple computers. Used by the vast majority of publishers around the world, the PDF renders text, graphics, and charts – completely independent of browser or operating system settings. Of course, in order to display image-rich content and interactive fields, PDFs use huge amounts of file space. PDF compression is the use of different compression algorithms to minimize the size of PDF documents, either by minimizing the size of the PDF components or minimizing the PDF in general.

Here’s an example of a YUMPU PDF 3.0:

Internal PDF Compression

The most size-hungry files on the typical PDF document are the images, including everything from photographs to charts. In order to render these images in the PDF, the PDF includes the images in their original form within the document. To reduce the size of your PDF, therefore, you must first reduce the file sizes of your images. Using JPEGs and other “lossy” conversions for your images will decrease their quality but will dramatically reduce the file sizes. Also, you should use images that are already in the correct dimension for inclusion into the PDF document. If, for example, you import a 300×300 image into your PDF but then re-size it to 100×100 – it will still take up the space of the original 300×300 image!

External PDF Compression

After you create your PDF document, you should use a file service to perform the final compression. Online compression tools allow you to enter in your PDF document, receiving a freely compressed version of the PDF in your email after a short waiting period. You can also download freeware and premium software that performs identical functions and the professional version of the Adobe software suite has an internal compression manager.

If you are using Adobe – the “save as” function will give you the option to save your document as a reduced size PDF. This is the most efficient way to compress your PDF document in preparation for upload to your website or to YUMPU Publishing. You can generally check boxes like “discard all comments” and “discard forms and multimedia” to remove some of the extraneous features of your PDF that won’t be seen by the public anyway.

Problems with Uncompressed PDFs

According to Marketo, a popular marketing automation firm, almost 50% of all businesses utilize eBooks or Whitepapers as a lead generation tool. The average length of these documents is fifteen pages or almost ten megabytes for a non-compressed PDF. Ten megabytes takes ages to download, especially on a mobile device. Without PDF compression, it takes so long for your website users to download PDFs from your website that they often leave the site without converting.

Uncompressed PDF files also pose a problem for website developers. The bandwidth that is used to transfer massive PDF files between hosting services and website guests can rapidly deplete hosting accounts, and the hard disc space that PDF files take up can put you over the limit on many smaller shared-hosting plans.

Alternatives to PDF Compression software

PDF compression software isn’t a perfect solution, it is a compromise between quality and file-size that sometimes leaves users and publishers feeling a little bit let down. The drop in image quality is noticeable in many documents, and the removal of interactive segments is unacceptable if you plan to use your PDFs to guide people through a complicated series of actions.

YUMPU Publishing provides a method for publishers, even individuals with no coding experience or design experience, to create interactive ePapers out of PDF documents. If you recognize the need to provide a better user experience for your website visitors than a traditional PDF can provide, an ePaper might be the perfect solution. YUMPU ePapers retain the original quality of the PDF documents that they are based upon, but they can also incorporate animation and interactivity that is impossible in hyper-compressed PDFs.