How do I reduce the size of my PDF file?
There are several ways you can reduce the size of your PDF files with PDFpen and PDFpenPro:
1. Optimize PDF
If you are using PDFpen/Pro version 12 or later, choose File > Create Optimized PDF... Select your settings to compress the document as much or as little as needed. PDFpen will create a new optimized document, preserving the original in case you would like to revise your optimization settings. Please see PDFpen's Help/ User Guide, or the ebook TakeControl of PDFpen, for more information.
2. Resample Image
Generally doing Edit->Resample Image lets you resample a scanned document down to 1-bit text, or jpeg compression, and to select the dpi you want. Either can be used to effectively compress scanned documents considerably. Or, you can select an image in a document, choose Edit -> Resample Image..., set your resampling preferences, and press "Resample Entire Document" to reduce image sizes document-wide. (Acrobat will compress scanned documents in a similar way. The other compression area for PDF files relates more to non-scanned documents and detecting the use of repeated information in those files (e.g. same logo on every page etc). That is the area where Acrobat will better PDFpen)
NOTE: There's a small trick to get resampling to work: besides choosing a lower DPI, next to the "Color JPEG compression" option there should be a percentage indicator -- normally choosing 50% lowers file size considerably while retaining good quality.
3. Quartz Filters
Additionally, in File->Save As, it is possible to specify a quartz filter for document compression (that compresses images). These can be customized in the ColorSync Utility application in OS X's Utilities folder. You can experiment with creating different Quartz filters to see if they offer better results. This blog post has a pretty decent tutorial on it.
There are some cases where using the Quartz can increase file size - we see it typically with larger documents. It's a Quartz filter built-in to the OS X system that we utilize. If you have a sample file (before and after) submit them and I can flag them for the engineering team to investigate.
PDFpen and PDFpenPro also has several built-in compression methods that reduces the document's file size as you scan, edit, or save. Compression methods include MRC compression and CCITT (G4) compression. In rare cases of over-compression, please contact our Support team for further assistance.