Tag Archives: compression

Batch Compress PDF Files, Set Custom DPI & Remove Select Elements

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Saving document files in PDF does make sense, because it is generally more secure against unintended modifications compared to other formats such as TXT, RTF, DOCX and more. Therefore, many of us rely on PDF these days when it comes to sharing files that contain sensitive information. One drawback of this is that PDF files are often larger in size compared to many other document formats. If you require to send a document through a channel that has certain file size limitations, you probably want to keep your files as compact as possible. Previously, we've covered some really useful PDF compression tools such as PDF Compressor, PocoDoc or Nice PDF Compressor. If you've already tried those and are looking for something more effective at compression, ORPALIS PDF Reducer Free is yet another option with a decent output quality and batch processing mode. Read More

CoffeeZip For Windows Offers Impressive Archive Format Support

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7-zip’s reputation in the file archive genre speaks for itself. The open-source tool wins over various paid file compression utilities including WinRAR and WinZip. While the number of features it offers might not be on par with its paid counterparts, this is actually an advantage for most users who don't require those advanced features. Though 7-zip isn't the only free file archiving utility out there; Recently when we reviewed KuaiZip for Windows, we were impressed by its compression algorithm, and even added it to our top Windows applications of 2012 list. Today, we’re bringing you another promising file archiving tool called CoffeeZip. Even though it’s not the most feature-rich app from its genre, its extensive format support - especially for file extraction - seems great. It allows you to compress and extract ZIP, WIM, TAR and 7z files. In addition, you can extract (but not compress) ARJ, ALZ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DEB, DMG, EGG, FAT, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, VHD, WIM, XAR and Z files. Read More

Free Archiving Tool KuaiZip Boasts Better Compression Than 7-Zip

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There’s an umpteen number of file compression utilities out there but 7-Zip easily wins hands-down for most users due to its open-source nature, light memory footprint, wide range of compressed archive format support, and price tag of free. Most archive utilities that we come across nowadays tend to support various archive formats irrespective of their default extension. Though usually, a file archiver works best with its native format for the best overall compression ratio. KuaiZip is a Windows file compression utility that recently crossed my way and left me utterly impressed, to say the least. Not only does it seem to be more powerful than 7-Zip, but its intuitive UI makes it extremely easy to use, even for novices. The tool allows extracting most of the popular archive formats including ZIP, 7Z, ACE, ARJ, BZ2, CAB, GZ, ISO, JAR, LZH, TAR, UUE, Z, as well as KuaiZip's own KZ format. Read More

Batch Compress PDFs To Reduce Size Without Loss Of Quality

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If your common method of sharing PDF files is through email, or any other internet-dependent medium, it is important that the documents are small in size. The purpose of any compression app is to reduce the size of the file without bringing down its quality, but unfortunately, many do bring down the quality while compressing. If you are looking for a way to reduce the size of your PDF documents without decline in noticeable quality loss, you are in luck. PDF Compressor is a brand new Windows app that allows you to compress your PDF documents and reduce their file size. The app is capable of processing thousands of PDF files at one time in batch mode, according to the developer. The best part about the app that it's touch enabled, which means you can use it easily on a Windows 8 Pro tablet. The simple interface ensures there is absolutely no learning curve for common users. Read More

MoreSpace: Compress Files & Folders Into HFS+ Format To Save Space

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Space and file size matter more in cases where data has to be transferred online, because there is always a limit and because sending large files takes time and precious bandwidth that you may be short on. As far as your local hard disk is concerned, time isn’t a issue, but space still matters; however, files can’t be kept in an archive format all the time. They will have to be extracted each time you want to access them and will need to be recompressed once you’ve made changes. MoreSpace Folder Compression is a Mac app worth $0.99 in the Mac App Store that compresses files but does not add them to an archive. Files are kept in their original format and compression is on the HFS+ system. The app actively monitors any folder that you’ve added and compressed for changes, and when a change is detected, i.e., items are added to a folder, the app will compress the new items. In addition to compressing any folder you choose to add, it will also compress your email. Read More

Explzh: An Excellent File Compression Alternative To 7Zip & WinRAR

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For file archiving and data compression, WinRAR is among the most popular tools. However, WinRAR is paid. 7-zip, an open source utility, is also a handy and powerful solution, which, due to its robust compression ratio, has won many accolades. Although both WinRAR and 7-Zip don't seem to be lacking in features and functionality, you can try Explzh as well, should you need an alternate solution (I still can't figure out how to pronounce it, though). Albeit simple in design (well, that’s how most file archivers are, anyway), Explzh seems to be one of the best in the business. It supports a multitude of formats, including LHA, JAR, RAR, ZIP, ISO-9660/ISO-13346, just to name a few, and can easily extract files to target locations, including FTP support. It also includes an integrated file splitter to easily split large files into your desired-sized fragments. Furthermore, it can be used to compress and encrypt files using AES (Advance Encryption Standard). Additional features include tabbed windows, thumbnail view of archived files, search for in-archive content, file editing within the archives, OLE2 drag & drop support, incremental search, AutoComplete, Batch compression, and much more. Read More

PDF Toolkit: Compress PDFs, Extract Text And Images In Different Sizes [Mac]

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Feature rich free PDF tools and/or editors are hard to come by. PDF is one of the most common formats for viewing image rich documents on a slew of devices and that leaves you with little choice except to pay up for a halfway decent PDF tool or use several free alternative apps instead of a single one. PDF Toolkit is a PDF editing app for Mac that normally costs $4.99 but is free this month (makes you love Summer, doesn’t it?). PDF Toolkit isn’t for editing a PDF file i.e., you cannot add or remove text and images from a file. What you can do is merge multiple PDFs into a single file. Unlike free tools that only let you merge 2 files into one, PDF Toolkit gives you the freedom to merge as many files as you want. It can extract pages from a file, either in order or as per user specifications and create a new PDF from the extracted pages. Additionally, you can extract text and images from a file and compress it on four different standards to reduce the size. Note that this compression does not mean adding it to a zipped file, compression with PDF Toolkit is different and discussed in detail below. Read More

Panther: Feature-Rich Media Converter With Audio Compression Feature

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When we talk about media converters, names like Handbrake, Format Factory or Freemake Video Converter automatically come to the mind. These media converters offer a plethora of features to customize the video and audio conversion process. We have also tested and reviewed various media converter tools in the past - Motion Man, Oxelon Media Converter, Adapter, E-Z Media Converter, just to name a few - which include a limited feature-set for converting video and audio files. However, what makes a media player different from others is the quality of its encoding engine, user interface and ease of use. If the latter factor is what attracts you the most, then you should give Panther Media Converter a try. It is a stylish media conversion application that lets you convert both audio and video files into widely used media formats. Additionally, you can compress your audio files with the built-in media compression option, which according to the developer, compresses the media file without hurting the original audio quality. Read More

Auto Delete Archives/Files After Extraction Or Compression In Mac [Tip]

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Desktops can be (and are) among the most cluttered places on your Mac, so much so that apps like Clean My Desktop exist to help you manage it. The thing is, your desktop isn’t the only biggest repository of junk on your Mac; the Downloads folder is often brimming with files that you’ve downloaded, used once and never needed again. Of these files, zipped files and extracted folders are one type. Even if you move the extracted files to another location, the archive remains taking up disk space in the original location. If you use the default archiving and extraction utility i.e. the Unarchiver, you can set it to automatically delete the archive folder once it’s extracted the files. Similarly, you can set the utility to delete files once they’ve been compressed. This tip shows you how. Read More

Contenta Converter Basic: Image Compressor, Resizer & Converter [Mac]

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Format conversion software aren't that hard to come by, as you can find even web apps that do as much, but there are few options for file compression, and not many of them deliver reasonable quality images. Contenta Converter Basic is a Mac app that converts between various image file formats, and compresses them. The app also helps you organize the converted images by setting renaming patterns based on one of several parameters provided in the app. Similarly, it lets you create folders for organizing images, where folder names can be pre-defined based on available tags. Read More

Desktop Hunter: Take Screenshots With Defined Image Compression Level

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Screenshots play a pivotal role in making your target audience understand the steps involved in configuring or installing an application. When you provide an image with a description, readers can easily comprehend the description as well as verify the sequence of steps involved. As they, "A picture is worth a thousand words", so true this quote stands. Capturing screenshots is quite easy, and while, in older version of Windows you were limited to Print Screen on your keyboard, the options have evolved in Windows 7 Snipping Tool. However, if Snipping Tool still doesn't satiate your appetite then third party tools are the way to go. There are various Windows applications that provide a number of screenshot options, and some that even feel somewhat unnecessary. One of those tools you can try is Desktop Hunter. It is a screenshot-taking utility that lets you capture screenshots and save them in multiple image formats such as JPEG, PNG, BMP and GIF. Unlike previously covered tools including Shotty and GreenShot, both of which are quite awesome too, it allows you to set individual compression levels for each image format. You can set custom hotkeys for taking screenshots of a selected region, active window or the complete desktop. Read More

Optimize / Reduce MS Office Documents And PDF File Size With PocoDoc

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You may find 5-10 compression and optimization levels in file archiving utilities to squeeze through multiple files in limited storage space. But many a times file compression utilities fail to compress document files, including, DOC, DOCX, PDF, PPTX, etc. I have faced such problems with both 7-Zip and WinZip. PocoDoc is small document optimization tool to compress document file size according to specified compression level. Contrasting to other file compression tools, it supports 19 compression levels in total, with 1 is for achieving highest compression and 19 for lowest. Read More

Compress Portable Application Data To Save Disk Space With AppCompactor

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Consider a situation where you need to copy some portable applications to your external storage medium but there isn’t sufficient space available on device in question. In such a case, many users will start removing unnecessary data in order to copy much needed applications files or other data, but what if there isn’t a single file that you can afford to delete from your portable storage medium? In such situations, the best method around to squeeze through more files without deleting existing data is to use compression utility for saving precious disk space. AppCompactor can compress data of portable applications in order to save disk space and also to improve their performance. This could come extremely useful when you’re already running out of disk space and want to save some important data on it. Unlike traditional file compression applications, it applies high compression on each file without archiving all of them into single container, allowing you to use the compressed application without having to unpack the contents. Read More

Document Press: Compress MS Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access

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Document Press is an attempt from developers of 7-Zip compression utility to compress Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access files instead of using other generic compression software, which might not be effective in compressing MS Office documents. It is a small portable tool which was released back in 1999 (Yes, I know it is more than a decade back) and has not been updated since. The version is still 1.0 and the reason for reviewing it today is because we found it to be working with Office 2010 as well. Developed for older versions of Office, the official support, as mentioned in the user's manual, is for .doc, .xls, .ppt, and some more document formats only, but we found it to be working with .docx and .xlsx too. Read More

Bru File Manager Includes FTP Client, Creates Compressed Archives, And Sync Files & Folders

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File managers comes useful in concurrently handling the data which is residing in multiple locations. File managers have to be fast in terms of file processing and must hosts multiple features to quickly apply settings and perform data transfer. Amongst many file managers featuring essentials, Bru File Manager is a new java-based tool which offers multitude of options to manage folders/files residing in two different locations. It includes a simple FTP client to quickly establish a FTP connection with the server for transferring data. Read More

PowerArchiver 2010 Is Free Compression And Archiving Utility

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PowerArchiver is one of the best compression utility out there developed by ConeXware. They’ve recently changed tracks and are offering their eminent product free for personal use, which is a stripped-down version of standard PowerArchiver yet provides many feature and options to make the most of it. For those who don't know, it supports a huge list of features and formats ranging from famous Zip, ZIPX to CAB, open source 7-Zip, to ISO, BIN , including Nero’s NRG. Read More

BitSer File Compression Software Is Alternative To 7Zip

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Demands for file-compression utilities are getting higher as time progresses. Today systems are generally overwhelmed with a lot of data that needs to be archived. The file-compression utilities can be useful for compressing or backing-up precious data, which eventually provides extra space. As for now, 7-zip is the most eminent file-compression utility but severely lacks a handy user interface. Bitser, however, is an alternative that provides almost every feature of 7-Zip along with extensive tabbed and easy-to-use interface having numerous options for managing archives & backups. Read More

Quickly Compress Mp3 Music Files For Free

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Compression of music files can save plenty of disk space and allow more music to be added to the iPod or any other mp3 player. If you have a music file that has a very high bitrate but you only listen to it on stereo speakers or an mp3 player, then even if you reduce the bitrate a little, it will remain immensely difficult to find a change in the overall sound quality. In short, reducing the bitrate a little does not harm the overall quality of the music much, but can save you plenty of disk space. Read More