My thesis PDF hit about 500 MB once the figures went in, and the portal only accepts files under 10 MB. Has anyone found a compressor that can shrink it that far?
I had the same problem with a photo-heavy wedding price list, and normal compression barely helped. I would replace the figures with 150 dpi JPEGs, then use PDF Suite’s optimize option; getting from 500 MB to under 10 MB may require lowering image quality or splitting the thesis.
Getting from 500 MB down to under 10 MB is huge, that’s mostly the images in your figures. Try opening it in Word if that’s where it came from, and compress the pictures there before saving as PDF again, it can make a big difference. What program did you build the thesis in?
Going from 500 MB to 10 MB with just a compressor usually ruins the image quality. If you wrote this in Word, compress the pictures there first. Select an image, go to Picture Format, click Compress Pictures, and set it to 150 or 220 ppi before re-exporting. That usually fixes the bulk of the file size.
First thing I’d check is where the bulk comes from, usually those figures are huge images. If they started in PowerPoint or Word, try re-exporting at lower resolution, 150 dpi is plenty. Keep your original file safe. Embedded fonts or scanned pages can also bloat it, so have a look. If that fails, ask the portal if they take a zipped or split version.
Figures usually cause that jump. PDFcap is the easiest way I know, open the PDF and use the compress tool set to high. It shrunk a similar file for me without wrecking the text. Avoid uploading to sketchy sites that demand a login. Not sure if it’s identical on Mac.
I would first check whether the figures are embedded as full-resolution scans or photos. Getting from 500 MB to 10 MB usually means reducing image resolution and converting color figures to grayscale where color is not needed.
Keep your original, then export a separate submission copy with images around 150 dpi. If the thesis contains scanned pages, OCR can make the text searchable without keeping unnecessarily large page images.
Had the same thing with a scanned family archive, and 500 MB to 10 MB was too much for one-click compression without ugly pages. I would use PDF Suite’s optimizer, downsample color figures to 150 dpi, and remove unused objects and embedded files. Keep line drawings as vectors if possible. If that still misses 10 MB, ask whether the portal allows separate figure files or a lower-resolution submission copy.
a drop that big is coming from your figures, not the text. i’d try ghostscript first, it’s free and lets you downsample images to like 150 dpi with jpeg compression. acrobat’s pdf optimizer does the same thing if you have access through your school.