MM Answers: how to reduce PDF size natively on Mac?

A Mother's Day with another tip from our column MM Answers!

The question of the day:

How to reduce PDF size natively on Mac?

ColorSync Utility

The utility ColorSync responsible for managing color profiles and filters in macOS. Its interface consists of two parts: a browser for viewing the document and a utility window. Check out Apple's explanation:

ColorSync offers an easy way to ensure accurate colors in your images from when they are captured to their printing or display. Devices such as scanners, monitors, digital cameras and printers handle colors differently. Matching colors from one device to another can be extremely difficult and time consuming. ColorSync takes care of color matching automatically.

You can also use Quartz filters to modify colors or add effects to PDF files and other documents.

Each device you use on your computer is capable of producing a different color band, called a gamma. The differences in these colors can be represented graphically by a model called a color space.

ColorSync translates an image's data between the color spaces of the devices so that each device reproduces the image as accurately as possible. Color information for each device is saved as a ColorSync Profile or as an ICC Profile.

Most macOS graphics applications save ColorSync profiles directly to the document. ColorSync compares these profiles to the profile of your display when you view the document, and also compares it to the printer profile when you print it. The easiest way to ensure color matching is to make sure that each graphic device or application you use is configured to use ColorSync.

Configuring the filter

To begin, we will have to create a filter for the task of reducing the size of images, following the following steps:

  1. Click the down arrow on the left side of the filter “Reduce File Size”;
  2. Select "Duplicate Filter" and name it (in this example, I will call it "MM Reducer");

Duplicate ColorSync

  1. Delete the first item “Image Sampling” and open the “Image Compression”;
  2. Set values ​​for the reduction as a suggestion, I recommend values ​​above 75%;

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  • Close the window.
  • Shrinking a PDF

    With the filter created, just open the PDF document with the ColorSync Utility:

    1. Right click on the file, select "Open With" and choose the ColorSync Utility or drag the PDF document to the ColorSync Utility icon in the Dock;
    2. Click on “Filter” and select “MM Reducer”;

    Applying Filter

    1. Click on "Apply";
    2. Click on "File", "Save As";
    3. Define a title for your file;

    Save as

    Note that the new document is smaller in size than the previous one, exactly by applying the ColorSync Utility filter. 😉

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    See you next time! 😃

    (via Cult of Mac)