Introducing iText pdfOptimizer: Optimize your PDFs and document workflow with intelligent, customized compression methods

Ghent, Belgium – May 11, 2021 – Today iText Software, a global leader in innovative award-winning PDF solutions, announced the launch of a new product for their iText 7 PDF library: pdfOptimizer. This optimization tool makes smart compression choices that save users memory space and increase speed. For companies with document-heavy workflows, archiving and processing can be time and resource-intensive. However, choosing what to omit should be carefully considered for the futureproofing of data. 

PDF is the most used file-format for documents on the web and over the last year its use has grown even further, partially due to the strong rise in digitalization boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“While many companies had already embraced the benefits of a digital document workflow, the pandemic emphasizes just how important it is to carefully evaluate the impact of this shift for your company. For a lot of our customers, many of them Fortune 500 enterprises, this means handling and storing hundreds of terabytes of data every year,” said Gary Fry, CEO of iText. 

Larger amounts of content-rich files also mean more time and resources are required, which is where iText’s latest product release provides an answer. 

“Most professionals welcome this digital evolution, but there are important factors to consider to make your digitalization efforts worthwhile, such as processing performance and cost-efficiency for data storage,” said Fry. 

pdfOptimizer lets developers implement methods that optimize PDFs for size and speed, i.e., compressing them in an intelligent way. Rather than simply converting high-quality images into lower-quality ones using heavy JPEG compression, pdfOptimizer offers various ways to optimize PDFs. You can preserve image quality while achieving the smallest possible file size, convert image types into different file types, resize images, and convert the color space of images from CMYK to RGB. You can also check if the file or image size increased after it is processed, to ensure intelligent use of optimization. 

Other options include ensuring the efficient use of fonts by removing duplicate fonts or using font-subsetting. 

“Font-subsetting, removing the unused characters of a font, is a prime example of how you can drastically decrease your file-size without losing any visual fidelity at all. With pdfOptimizer’s smart optimization methods, there simply isn’t a reason to not optimize your PDFs” said Raf Hens, CTO of iText.  

In essence pdfOptimizer focuses on the effortless and lossless aspects of optimization, so it becomes a no-brainer to apply in every situation. 

 
“Take the example of digitally signing documents. Digital signing is one of the most used solutions in our open-source iText Core library. If you do this for hundreds or even thousands of documents, efficiency is key. So, with an optimized PDF, you save valuable time. But the same goes for any post-processing step iText or other applications offer,” said Hens. 

So pdfOptimizer fits in perfectly with iText’s existing product range, either applied as a pre- or post-processing step for PDFs. 

pdfOptimizer is available starting today as an add-on for the iText 7 Core library and comes included in the iText 7 Suite free trial, available from iText’s website. To celebrate the launch, iText is hosting a live webinar on the 18th of May, 2021 focused on how to intelligently compress high volumes of PDFs with pdfOptimizer. As well as an introduction to the new product, it will offer information on how lossless compression in PDFs works, quantify potential savings by optimization and provide use-cases of how to use optimization in the document workflow. The webinar will also be available as an on-demand stream. You can register for the free webinar now.