Converting and Optimizing PDFs Online

Anna over at Productivity 501 wrote Adobe Create PDF/Share Review about Adobe’s website that converts and stores various document types as PDFs. I’ve been using the current Create Adobe PDF Online website for quite a while, and did a quick comparison.

I converted the same Word doc which contains several photos and is 6.2 MB with the current Adobe PDF Online and the new one. With the current website I was able to choose to optimize for Web, no such option in the new version. The Current conversion was much more efficient. I also saved the document as a PDF on the Mac for comparison.

Original doc size: 6.2mb
Apple PDF: 6.2mb
Current Adobe PDF Online: 164kb
New Adobe PDF Online: 3.7mb

In addition, the New site messed up some of my formatting and did not preserve web links.

Hopefully Adobe will take what they already have in the (fairly outdated, but much more functional) Create PDF Online and incorporate it into the new version.

I have uploaded the three docs (Original, New PDF site, Current PDF site) to drop.io for comparison. Note, the current Adobe PDF site only allows 5 free conversions per email address.