PDFLight

With their undeniable advantages such as easy shareability, relatively better security than a typical document file and reliable reproduction of published material on multiple platforms, it is easy to see why PDFs are one of the most commonly used formats out there.

This said, in certain cases, one of the biggest disadvantages of PDFs is their size, which might make them quite difficult to share with others. Fortunately, PDF can be optimized and shrink in size with the help of specialized tools such as PDFLight.

In a few words, PDFLight is a user-friendly piece of software designed from the ground up to make it as easy and as quickly as possible for you to reduce the size of your PDF files, without compromising their quality by a great extent.

Getting down to what is important, the application undergoes a streamlined and surprise-free installation process, subsequent to which it can be launched and used right off the bat, without requiring any type of configuration on your part.

In fact, besides the fact that it helps you optimize PDF files and reduce their sizes, its overall simplicity is the app's main 'selling point'. Consequently, the workflow is reduced to you having to drag and drop the files from their location onto the utility's main window (or load them view the 'Browse...' button), and that is really about it.

Once the files have been loaded, the app automatically optimizes and overwrites them in their original destination. You can get a clear description regarding the effectiveness of the optimization process as the utility displays the files' original sizes, their new sizes and the reducing factor in percentages.

At this point, you can either proceed to reduce the size of the following PDF or view the already processed one in Explorer thanks to the two dedicated buttons.

PDFLight is clearly not what you would call a professional or a comprehensive application since it does not allow much user control over the optimization process.

Regardless, its accessibility and speed recommend it for users who simply need to reduce the sizes of their PDFs as much as possible, in the shortest period and with the least amount of effort.