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How Can I Create a PDF Compressor Service Using Automator?

I would like to create a service, which can compress the PDF documents easily using Automator rather than using third-party applications.
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Kishore Kumar

Comments: One Response to “How Can I Create a PDF Compressor Service Using Automator?”

    6 years ago

    If you want it as a service, I would do this:
    Create a new Automator document, and select Service as the type.
    Then, select PDF Files as the type of input, and Finder as the app at the top.
    Then simply search for and add the Apply Quartz Filter to PDF Documents as the only action. When you add it, it will prompt you to add a Copy action too. You can add that, but it sounds like you just want to compress and be done with it, so if that is the case, don't add it.
    Then save.
    Now you should be able to Control+click in the Finder on a PDF file and select this service from the context menu.
    But note that PDF compression has to do mostly with images inside the PDF. So a large PDF with only text and maybe vector graphics won't compress at all. But one with a lot of images may compress considerably. You'll notice then that the images in the PDF are lower quality.

    Of course there are a lot of other ways to go with this. You could add actions to prompt you to save the PDF as a new file. You could use Compress Images In PDF Documents instead of thew Quartz filter. You could make an App instead of a Service and then drag-and-drop the PDFs on to it. You can even make a Print Service instead and then Print, Save As PDF and choose your Automator task to export a smaller PDF than normal.

    You can also use Create Archive instead, which will put the existing PDF into a zip file. It will be a little harder to access, and won't so up in searches as well, but the original quality of the images will be intact.

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