Getting the most out of PDFs
How do I print a long PDF on fewer sheets of paper?
Double-sided printing halves the sheets for nothing; your printer's own 2-up halves them again at about 70% size; and rebuilding the PDF so sparse pages share a sheet reduces the count with the text left at full size.
Three approaches, in the order you should try them.
1. Print double-sided: free, and halves everything
If the printer can do it, duplex printing halves the sheet count with no change to the document at all. Nothing is scaled and nothing is re-laid-out.
Check whether your printer has it. Many do, and the setting is often off by default. On a printer without duplex, most drivers offer "print odd pages, then reinsert and print even pages", which is the same result with one manual step.
Do this first, always. It costs nothing and loses nothing.
2. Your printer's 2-up: free, but harder to read
Every print dialogue has "pages per sheet". Set it to 2 and you halve the sheets again.
What it costs: every page is scaled to about 70%, whatever is on it. Ten-point text becomes seven-point. Most people can read that on most documents. It gets hard if the document already uses small type, or if the reader's eyes aren't young.
The key point is that this happens in the printer settings. The PDF doesn't change, nothing is uploaded anywhere, and you can undo it by printing again. For a one-off print job, this is the right choice.
3. Rebuild the PDF: when the document itself is the problem
The two above are print settings. They do not help if the problem is that the document will be *read* on a screen, or emailed, or if 2-up at 70% is still too small to be useful.
That is when you change the document. SmartShrink measures how much of each page has content on it and stacks sparse pages that sit next to each other onto one sheet at full size. A report with airy pages gets shorter and its text stays the same size. Dense pages are left alone.
Here is how it differs from printer 2-up:
| Printer 2-up | Rebuilding the file | |
|---|---|---|
| Scales every page | Yes, ~70% | No. Full size, or the page is left alone |
| Changes the file | No | Yes, produces a new PDF |
| Works on a screen too | No, print only | Yes |
| Best for | A one-off print | A document you will send or keep |
Before any of them: delete what nobody needs
The cheapest page is the one you do not print. Cover sheets, blank separators, a repeated appendix, the "this page intentionally left blank" pages: Delete Pages removes them in one go, and on many documents that alone saves a tenth of the paper.
What not to do
Do not scale the whole document down to fit more on a page by setting a custom scale in the print dialogue. It scales *everything*, including the pages that were already dense, and produces a document where the important pages are the hardest to read.
Common questions
Is printing 2-up the same as combining pages in the PDF?
No. 2-up scales every page to about 70% regardless of content, and only affects that print job. Combining pages in the file measures the content first and only merges pages that fit at full size.
Will combining pages break double-sided printing?
No, but it changes which content lands on which side, so check the result before a long print run. This matters most if the document has chapters that were meant to start on a right-hand page.